Trivium are no strangers to the
ironclad might of a Donington stage, but their first crack of the whip – the
period surrounding and leading up to 2005 and 2006’s main stage appearances off
the back of sophomore release Ascendancy – was a long time
ago.
At this stage, the band have spent just as
much of their career licking considerable wounds as dominating the metal
soundscape, though such a process of maturation has resulted in not only a
diehard fanbase who know their Miyukis from their Scyllas and Charybdis’, but a
growth period for each individual band member.
Many fans are beyond sick of recanting the
same 2006-centric stories around where Trivium “went wrong”, but the fact this
is album eight – the fact that those wounds were suitably cleansed, healed and
learned from – is entirely the point.
The Trivium of 2017 is a resoundingly
focused beast of a band.
For vocalist Matt Heafy, you need only listen to the
chorus of Other Worlds, the earth-shattering screams throughout the duration of Thrown
Into The Fire or the opening lung-emptying bellow of Betrayer to hear someone
whose taken every one of those post-Crusade criticisms on the chin. We heard him
return to a more gravelly tonality on In Waves and discover a newfound love for
clean vocals on Silence in the Snow, but now – with the aid of various
practices to scream “properly” – Heafy’s voice is in the best and most multifaceted shape of its
life.
Indeed, whilst Silence in the Snow
showcased a band confidently weaving together their past identities into a very
accessible and yet complex whole, the only ‘missing’ piece was the intensity;
the more recognisable “Trivium” as they exist to the masses.
Thankfully, The Sin and the Sentence represents
the culmination of 17 years’ worth of touring, practice and experimentation. The Heart from Your Hate is a perfect festival headliner
with its gang vocal “Hate!” chorus, The Wretchedness Inside brings about a bouncy djent-infused main riff that would command any legion of attendees to
leave the floor, and The Revanchist is an uplifting epic that segues into a
middle third of pure instrumentation, connoting the phenomenal Crusade
album-ender or the mighty Shogun's final few moments.
New drummer Alex Bent is an inhumanly talented individual, and a solid fit for a group of musicians who’ve already mastered their respective crafts.
He brings to the band a next level amount of technical ferocity, with double
bass foot-flurries on tracks like Sever The Hand that would make Gene Hoglan’s
head spin.
Just watch this guy in action and try accepting that your eyes
aren’t deceiving you. He really is that fast, and that damn perfect.
Corey Bealieu too, MAN – even back on Vengeance Falls we were hearing more complex
arrangements when it came to guitar solos, but here? Once again we have someone
who knows their instrument inside out, able to string patterns and passages
together that playfully exist within a venn diagram split between elegant and
furious.
If there’s an identity to Trivium
underneath the various vocal experiments, it’s this immaculate technique – one
bolstered by bassist Paulo Gregoletto's ear for song arrangement, providing more dynamic passages that allow Heafy and Beaulieu to rip the roof off whenever they see fit.
Combine all these elements, all this talent and all the time invested, and you have a damn-near immaculate metal record. Choruses soar, riffs slam home, solos remind us of that old-school Master of Puppets' blend of technicality and neo-classical flair.
The question comes up a lot as to “Who is
the next great metal band?”, or “Who is next great Download headliner?”
At least one of those answers is – and always
has been – Trivium.