Riding high on the momentum from their eighth studio album The Sin and The Sentence, Trivium roared into Heavy Montreal neck deep in a highly successful world tour. To say that fans were buying what the Orlando group were selling would be a gross understatement, as the four-piece rolled out a set that included heavy hitter cuts "Pull Harder On The Stringers of Your Martyr", "Strife", "In Waves", and a slew of hits from their most recent genre-bending record.
Metal Injection sat-down with longtime guitarist Corey Beaulieu to discuss the songwriting process, addition of drummer Alex Bent, straddling the line between heavy and melodic and potential new material.
On Fan Reception to The Sin and The Sentence:
"Before we were making it we just kind of like wanted to make heavy, still very melodic and catchy, but still write some darker stuff and kind of bring back more riff heavy fucking songs. I think we kind of had the skeletons and core elements written, but once we started jamming, and especially after Alex came in, having a drummer of his skill, he was right up there with his ability to just wing-it and try things instantly on the spot without having to try to talk a drummer through things you have an idea for."
On the Album and Introduction of Alex Bent on Drums:
"The first song we started putting together would be what would become "The Sin and The Sentence". The song was structurally very different. Once we started jamming it different ideas started happening and there was a lot written on the fly and just changed around. When Alex started playing drums on it, it was like woah, and really upping the game a little bit. The intensity level, even on something that was very melodic, his drumming intensity brings this energy that we had kind of been looking for in the music. I think his drumming really amps up the songs a lot more than a couple of the previous records."
On Performing With Heavier Bands and More Rock-Oriented Lineups:
"Sometimes we’ll be on a bill where we’re the heaviest band. We’ve been on a bill like Brutal Assault in the Czech Republic with death metal bands and grindcore bands. We played a festival in Europe and were one of the headliners and we were one of the only bands that had singing. It’s kind of nice to be able to have that wide range, because it opens you up to have these opportunities where we can go in and play something more rock and show people the heavier side of the genre and maybe bring some people in as a gateway kind of thing. We can also play the heavier stuff and maybe meet some people who would have blown us off as this mainstream metal band and play in front of some people and maybe change their opinion. It’s fun."
On Contrasting Influences Impacting the Band:
"We as music fans listen to everything from classic rock to death metal and black metal, power metal and classic metal. That’s why I think our sound has opened us up to be able to cross over into multiple platforms because we’re a fan of a lot of different things in metal that we’re able to fuse together and combine everything we like about metal and put everything into our own sound. I think figuring out who we are as band and what’s our thing, I think that’s the reason the new record is impacting a lot of people. We kind of took everything that we’ve done on all the records and found a way to just fuse it all together in a very natural way."
On Plans for 2018-19 and Potential New Material:
"We’ve talked about doing some European festivals next summer. Other than that it’s kind of a wait and see what develops. We have an open slate for next year for most of the year so it’s seeing what pops up. We’re always writing stuff. There’s a bunch of riffs and demo ideas, just collecting ideas so when we start diving and really going into it we have a lot of stuff to pick from. Paolo has a bunch of riffs, I know Matt has some stuff and I’ve written a couple of songs already. We’re just trying to write as much as we can and we pick the best of the lot and go from there. No idea when we’re going to put out a new record, but we talked about getting a head start and going into our jam sport at the beginning of next year, playing with some ideas, seeing what happens and go from there. There’s no pressure from a label to get a record out right now, but we figured since we had some time off and spaced out the touring that we could go in and jam out some ideas and see what comes about. A lot of cool stuff happens when we’re in a room just jamming. Having more experience touring and playing with Alex now, we can just go in there and see what we can build off of this last record. Who knows? Next year is kind of open, so maybe we’ll bust out a new record or maybe all of this touring will pop up."
Trivium kick off another batch of North American tour dates on October 3rd. Dates and tickets here.
