Trivium

Heavy metal's a strange beast right now. None of the young guns have conquered it. Metalcore acts like Lamb of God and Shadows Fall have succeeded to a degree, but honestly, none of them have the staying power or mass appeal of a band like KoRn. Not one member of the metalcore militia has become that monolithic monster that metal needs at the top. Slipknot are the only "new gods" that fans have. No one can really touch them. In the mid-90s, Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax and Pantera ruled the roost, but these days, Slipknot are the lone kings. Where's the young band that'll step up and spearhead the genre's next evolution? Trivium makes a valiant effort on Shogun, their third album. In fact, they're out for blood, storming the hill with samurai swords drawn. Even though the album may not prove earth shattering for heavy music, it doesn't matter because Trivium have come into their own as a fierce and fiery force to be reckoned with.

Shogun carefully walks the line between progressive and destructive. The album's first track, "Kirisute Gomen," is a shredder's dream. It begins with a faint acoustic intro carried by propulsive double bass drums. The song eventually explodes into full-blown riff warfare. The riffs dive across giant rhythms, blending classic thrash violence with a modern sense of melody. The solos cut through the din with a fleet-fingered virtuosity that'll impress even the most volatile naysayers. Trivium have crafted their epic, and it's everything fans have hoped for. "Into the Mouth of Hell We March" is a fist-pumping anthem complete with more tasty lead lines and riffs. "Of Prometheus and the Crucifix" shows another side of Trivium. On the song, they blend mythology from various cultures, evincing a certain literacy that most metal bands neglect in favor of bravado. Trivium's gotten smarter and more eloquent, and it's instantly apparent. Paying attention in "Mythology 101" certainly didn't hurt Mr. Matt Heafy and Co. Actually, Heafy pulls his lyrics from numerous cultures including Greco-Roman and Hebrew traditions.

The album's final cut, the 11-minute plus title track, is a hell of a ride, and the perfect closing opus. It's a battle of sorts with guitars pushing and pulling against Heafy's vocals, but never collapsing. The band doesn't necessarily go into Tool-territory in terms of experimentation, but they've taken everything great about their sound and amplified it. However, like any good samurai warriors, they still have some new challenges to tackle. Shogun proves they're up to the task.

—Rick Florino
10.01.08

Trivium never asked to be described as "the next Metallica" by a hyperbolic British magazine or two, but because they tried to make the best of the opportunity instead of wilting away with apologetic shouts of "We're not worthy!," they've taken a hell of a lot of guff from radical heavy metal fans, already stirred up over the group's signing to the closest approximation to corporatism in their world: Roadrunner Records (who actually dare work with non-metal bands -- curse them!). Admittedly, the youthful Floridian quartet (whose confidence has been frequently misconstrued as arrogance) didn't help matters when the band followed its impressive sophomore album, Ascendancy, with an undisguised bid for wider commercial appeal via its inconsistent third album, The Crusade. Thus came something of a backlash even among their supporters, bringing, in turn, the stylistic retreat toward more uncompromising metallic terrain embodied by the group's fourth album, Shogun. On this outing, Trivium elevate their new millennium thrash to -- by their standards -- largely unprecedented heights of intensity and complexity, stacking riff upon riff (really good ones, too) into densely structured highlights such as "Down from the Sky," "Throes of Perdition," and the especially devastating "Kirisute Gomen" (which supposedly means "Pardon me while I cut off your head off" in Japanese). Corey Beaulieu and Matt Heafy's shred-intensive guitar solos also pepper every track, flying every which way like vengeful hornets, and the latter's always varied vocalizing once again prizes Hetfield-ian growls and guttural screams over more sparsely distributed (and therefore more impactful) melodic singing.

Certain cuts may feel like they're jammed with a few too many different hard/soft/harder personalities for some listeners' tastes (e.g. "Torn Between Scylla and Charybdis," "Into the Mouth of Hell We March"), but most headbangers are bound to appreciate these very contradictions, which the band extrapolates to a monumental climax on the multifaceted 11-plus-minute album-closing title track. As for the lyrics: if these song titles didn't make it obvious already, Heafy's penchant for untowardly bookish vocabulary and obscure mythological references remains intact (see also "Of Prometheus and the Crucifix" and "Like Callisto to a Star in Heaven"), and will probably delight as many metalheads as it irritates, but at least he's no longer forcing unrelated words together as though he were simply reading the dictionary every night (which certainly seemed to be the case on The Crusade's confusing "Entrance of the Conflagration," for example). And yes, Trivium still show no qualms or remorse about emulating both the sounds and epic scope of vintage Metallica, but what's so wrong with that? After all, Metallica tried to do the same thing on their own 2008 return to form, Death Magnetic. In short: Shogun is easily Trivium's most challenging and ambitious album yet, and even though it isn't likely to spawn any hit singles, it was clearly the album Trivium had to make in order to get unduly prejudiced metalheads off their backs and finally silence undue suspicions over their abundant talent and devotion to heavy metal. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia, All Music Guide