Interviews

 

TRIVIUM

 

Words: Rod Yates

 

Lesson one for all aspiring bands out there: If you think you’re good, make sure you tell as many people as possible. Just ask Florida metallers Trivium. When the quartet signed with Roadrunner in 2004, they supported the release of their second album Ascendency with interviews in which they confidently voiced their desire to be one of the biggest bands in the world. Think Metallica, Megadeth and Slayer, they suggested, and one day you will also think Trivium.

Not surprisingly, the notoriously suspicious metal world reared back, took one look at the young upstarts – frontman Matt Heafy was all of 19 when he made the claim – and laughed. Until, that is, they heard Ascendency and its classic thrash metal stylings, the likes of which turned them into genuine stars in the UK, where they recently performed in front of 80,000 people at the Download festival, and are currently touring with Iron Maiden.

 

“All the other bands that were around and that were getting pretty stale were pretty shocked [by what we said],” says Heafy triumphantly, enjoying a few days at home in Florida before leaving for the aforementioned Maiden tour. “But now they see we’re still around and hammering away, and all the disbelievers, they’re not really saying anything anymore. We haven’t really seen anything negative since [just released third album] The Crusade came out. I’m sure we will, but to us, whether it’s good or bad press, it’s still good. It just means there’s an awareness of Trivium.”

 

Spend any time talking to Heafy and it soon becomes clear that the only thing more unshakeable than his confidence is his ambition. As he reels off facts about the number of countries in which The Crusade debuted in the Top 50, and has the media savvy to preface a point he’s repeating from an earlier comment by saying, “Let me rephrase it so I don’t have two quotes that sound the same”, it’s obvious that Heafy is as savvy about the media and the business side of things as he is the artistic. If you’re after stories of wild backstage parties, look elsewhere.

 

“I don’t do any of that,” he offers. “It’s all about the show for me. I don’t want any of our fans to see a half arsed show cos we’re hungover or drunk, so for me it’s about giving the best possible show I can.”

 

What Heafy is comfortable talking about is the rise of his band, and his love of heavy metal. He got his first taste in 1998 when a friend gave the-then impressionable 12-year-old a copy of Metallica’s Black album, which to this day remains his favourite Metallica CD. Amazed at its technicality, aggression and catchiness, he delved back into the band’s back catalogue, devouring both it and any albums released by the band’s late-’80s/early-’90s thrash peers. Not surprisingly, when he started playing guitar and formed Trivium, what came out was a noise that owed a debt more to the bands of yesteryear than it did Korn, Deftones and Limp Bizkit.
The risk there, of course, is that Trivium may be seen as nothing more than revivalists at best, and plagiarists at worst. Which begs the question: what spin do they put on their music to ensure they fall victim to neither tag?

 

“Hmmm,” pauses Heafy, as though he’s never really considered it. “I don’t know what it is. We definitely have our favourite bands and influences, but we never try to sound like them. Everybody says they make what’s honest, and I guess I’ll just be another person who says that. We make what comes naturally, and our live show is like that too. If we fuck up, we’ll call ourselves out and laugh about it, whereas a lot of bands freak out about it and get all pissed off.
“We’ve always felt that we’ve done whatever we want,” he continues. “We never came up with a bunch of bands, we never came up with a movement, we’re not really in a clique of bands. Five years ago people were saying New Wave Of American Heavy Metal, and then a few years ago it was some other bullshit term. We always just say we’re a band that makes music. We’re just Trivium.”

 

Given the rise in their profile following the release of Ascendency, and the thinking that third albums are often regarded as pivotal ones in a band’s career – particularly for heavy metal acts, a belief lent some weight by the fact that Metallica (Master Of Puppets), Megadeth (Rust In Peace) and Slayer (Reign In Blood), to name but three, all released their career defining albums as their third – you’d think the pressure surrounding the writing of The Crusade must have been intense. Heafy seems unfazed by such a suggestion.

 

“With the writing process on this album there was so little time cos we were touring and we had to get the record done as soon as we could, so we had to write it on the road,” he says. “Since we had to do that with such a heavy workload there wasn’t time to be stressed out or to whine or complain. There wasn’t really a break. We’ve been on tour since April 2004 with little breaks here and there, and we had to write it straight on the road, as soon as we got home we had to record it in six weeks and it was done.”

 

Do you think this will be regarded as “the” classic Trivium album?

 

“It’s hard for us, cos [2003’s debut album] Ember To Inferno was on such a minor indie label, so sure it can be considered the first one, but it may not be. The Crusade is the best thing we could have done at the time, Ascendency was the best thing, Ember was the best, the next record will be better than The Crusade. So hopefully everything we do tops the last one, and that’s the only thing we think about.”

 

With The Crusade having debuted in the Top 20 in Australia, the band will be descending upon the country in January as part of the Big Day Out.

 

“Because this will be the first time in your country, and that’s all the time we’ll have, it’s going to be like a no-fuck-around kind of show,” Heafy boasts. “It’s going to be very serious and very intense set, it’s going to be a lot of music and we’re very commanding of what we want the crowd to do. And I’m sure that with the hype over there it’s going to be insane.”

 

 

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