ARTIST OF THE WEEK: Trivium

For Florida metal band Trivium, things have moved awfully fast. Barely out of their teens, they exploded onto the global metal scene with their debut album Ascendancy in 2005, which was certified gold in the UK and won them Best New International Artist in Kerrang! that same year.

Extremely young at the time, and exhibiting songwriting skills and musicianship that was far beyond their years, the band went out and toured with giants of the metal world, including Iron Maiden, Slipknot, Metallica, Heaven & Hell and many more - soon releasing 2006's The Crusade and 2008's Shogun to a metal audience that was desperate for something fresh and new. Fast forward to 2011 and they are on the cusp of releasing new album In Waves, a recording that they have for once taken their own sweet time over, with outstanding results.

While the tracks boast the guitar-driven edge that fans have come to expect from the band - pushing some of the tracks even further in their heaviness and aggression - the visual and lyrical world that the album inhabits is overall a fantastic leap forward for the band. Inspired as much by contemporary film and visual art as by the band’s love of heavy music, all of the imagery - including album art, videos, stage sets and web properties - take Trivium into territory that few bands have the confidence or vision to visit.

Trivium - In Waves

When I talk to vocalist Matt Heafy he’s a man with a mission: to spread the word about exactly why this album took so long to craft, and how it’s set to turn the world of metal on its axis for the better.

Having some rare downtime at home in Florida, the vocalist is due to fly out the day after we speak to San Francisco for a couple of days before meeting his bandmates in Los Angeles, where a lengthy summer tour begins. “We’re playing with Disturbed, Godsmack, Megadeth and a bunch of other great bands,” he says. “It’s one hell of a line up.”

He’s looking forward to leading the Trivium onslaught with some of the tracks from the new album, many of which have never heard the light of day. “We’ve played two of them before at a tiny little club show that we did a few months back,” he explains, “but the others really weren’t ready. I’ve been eagerly awaiting the chance to get them out there and can’t believe that it’s here at last.”

On the subject of lengthy waiting periods, it’s been three years between (last album) Shogun and this record, which is rare for a band that has always been pretty prolific in the past - and at one stage was turning out a new album a year. Why the wait? “The record company thing came into it,” he says, “but that only pushed us back by about two months. I guess it was mainly due to the huge amount of touring commitments that we had, and the fact that we wanted to invest a lot of time in this release.” The band spent around three years crafting the music side of things, then what Matt admits was a, “full year getting the visual element just right. We’d never done that before and it definitely paid off.”

Heafy has gone on record as saying: "In Waves to us… is Trivium. In Waves is the music, the artwork, the videos and the live show; they are all part of an interconnected whole. There's no question about it, in our eyes, that this is the most complete project we’ve ever done. We think we’ve finally made the record that we’ve always strived to make."

Read the full feature on Trivium in the latest issue of Rip It Up out now.

By Helene Ravlich