Kev Rowland I first came across Trivium when I was asked to review their second album, 2005’s ‘Ascendancy’ which just blew me away. A few years later I was fortunate enough to see them headline a gig in Auckland (supported by Whitechapel, what a night) and then went to see Disturbed just because they were one of the support acts (and then walked out on the headline as they were boring in comparison). Lead singer and guitarist Matt was one of the founders back in 1999 while Corey Beaulieu (guitars, backing vocals) has been there since 2003 and bassist Paolo Gregoletto since 2004 while this is the third album they have recorded with newbie drummer Alex Bent so it is no wonder they are tight.

Here we have a band determined not to live on past glories, but instead are at the height of their powers and have released possibly the finest album of their career to date. Everyone is confident in their place in the group, and at this time in their career feel there is no need whatsoever to restrict themselves in any way, which means they can be intensely melodic here, touching into death there, pushing symphonic there or being downright metalcore if that is what they wish to do. This a dramatic, soaring album which should see them step up in terms of popularity as there appear to be no limits to what they can do after this. However, Trivium’s popularity and media presence has been up and down over the years for some strange reason, even though their output has been consistently solid and this album allowing them to demonstrate just what a powerful entity they can be.

I only hope this release gains enough popularity for themselves to yet again consider coming to the end of the world as this is a superb piece of work which metalheads need to uncover.

adg211288 Rewind back to the year 2005 and Trivium were pretty much the new big deal in popular metal music. The melodic metalcore act had released their second album entitled Ascendancy to strong acclaim and the accolades were being heaped upon them. Among these accolades was what was a favourite line of praise amongst metal critics at the time, one that was not only used in relation to Trivium but certainly they would become the act most associated with it and thus the subject of a cautionary tale to go with it: that this band was the next Metallica.

Metallica of course was still around in 2005 and still is at the time of writing this review in early 2022. But at the time their most recent album was still St. Anger and in 2005 that was still leaving a bitter taste in many mouths. Many metalheads as such got on board with the idea that Trivium was the next Metallica, even though the band played metalcore. About as many rejected the idea that Trivium was the next Metallica, as the band played metalcore. Trivium actually got more than their fair share of detractors through this association as the next Metallica.

Supporters of the idea were open to the next Metallica being a metalcore band. Trivium were at least a thrash metal influenced metalcore band after all. I suppose it even made a kind of sense that a band who could be as big as Metallica be a metalcore band. It certainly appealed to the younger audiences of the 2000s who were looking for heavy music, such thrash metal had done in the 1980s. The detractors on the other hand were pretty adamant that any next Metallica couldn't possibly be a metalcore band. Metalcore of course being the untrue genre that it is to such people.

Trivium were a pretty fine metalcore band circa Ascendancy. I for one did not even especially care for metalcore by and large, but I did like them. That hasn't changed in the years since to be honest. I still think that Trivium's Ascendancy is a damn good album, metalcore or otherwise. They were a band full of a lot of potential.

The Crusade, their third album from 2006, is what happens when a promising young metalcore band gets called the next Metallica one too many times. They pretty much turn into Metallica.

This was actually the worst possible thing that they could do, even if it did allow them to break into the mainstream (yes, they really did. I bought my copy of The Crusade in Woolworths of all places). One, it pandered to those who seemed to want a new Metallica, making their music largely derivative in the process and two, it was never going to silence the detractors who had issue with the fact the band played metalcore. They now had issue with the fact the band sounded like Metallica. Those people were never going to be happy with anything Trivium did. Trivium could have made the objectively greatest album of all time and those people still would have said it was a steaming pile of shite. So I really hope silencing their detractors wasn't a motivation for Trivium's sudden sound change.

But the only other conclusion is that all those next Metallica accolades went the band's collective heads. And I don't know which is worse really. Either way, the band who made Ascendancy seemed to no longer exist.

Okay, so I'm speculating in both instances here. I don't know the band personally or assume myself to be privy to their motivations. I only have the facts of the matter as I hear them: We have a band who played metalcore who got called the next Metallica a lot and now suddenly plays thrash metal on their next release. I'm not saying that The Crusade sounds like Metallica one hundred percent of the time, as there are still some growled vocals that Metallica never had which harken back to Trivium's previous work. I wouldn't call any aspect of The Crusade metalcore though. It does sound like Metallica probably ninety percent of the time though. The entire situation isn't helped by the vocals. It's perfectly fine to be metalcore band that evolves into a thrash metal band. What's more eyebrow raising about the whole situation is how frontman Matt Heafy suddenly sounded a lot like Metallica's James Hetfield on top of that. His clean singing prior to this was not like that.

None of this is to say that The Crusade is a bad record. It's actually a pretty serviceable thrash metal record. It has its issues, chief among them being it's too derivative of a more popular band, but it's not as if Trivium forgot how to write a good riff whilst high on the next Metallica praise. Most of the time this is very listenable music, with some standout tracks being the opening three plus Becoming the Dragon. It just lacks an identity of its own.

I suppose one could also say that of the metalcore Trivium of 2005, but the difference is that metalcore Trivium was very good at what they did. Thrash metal Trivium, on this album at least, is patchy at best. A glaring issue is highlighted when I think back to how the album was pitched at the time as Trivium maturing as musicians and songwriters, but there's little evidence of that actually here. Imitation may be considered the most sincere form of flattery but it isn't conducive to maturing as a band. There are also aspects of the writing that seem immature, notably the F-bomb loaded To the Rats. A song full of profanity may have seemed cool when I was younger, but these days I associate it with unimaginative writing. Of course this is one of the more growl heavy songs to be featured on the album and a lot of those maturity comments focussed on Heafy switching primarily to clean vocals. The implication being that we metalheads should grow out of liking harsh vocals. Hmm...no I stand by my opinion that this wasn't the leap in maturity that it was supposed to be.

Meanwhile closing title track instrumental is the album's biggest misfire, a clear attempt on the part of Trivium to write a The Call of Ktulu or Orion. It's certainly not a coincidence that Trivium wrote the song to have a similar length to those classics. Only problem for Trivium is that it's not half as good and only really serves as an invitation to end the album prematurely with The Rising. Which is hardly one of its better songs either actually.

Despite these issues, I do somewhat enjoy this album. It's an enjoyment tempered with disappointment whenever I revisit this though. The Crusade was why I lost track of Trivium. I gave the following album Shogun a cursory listen at some point, but never an attentive one. I think it was better, less a carbon copy of Metallica than The Crusade, but by that point they'd lost me. As such I sometimes forget how good Ascendancy was: a special album that holds up well even in 2022. Which is why it sucked that its follow-up was The Crusade. As clone albums go you could do worse than this one. But it is what it is. A huge waste of potential. One day I'll start listening to the Trivium albums released since to see if they ever found their identity again.

adg211288 A Journey Into Metal Part II

The tale of how I first became a metalhead through the most unlikely of sources, Metallica's St. Anger, has now been told. It is advisable that you if haven't read it that you do so now, so that this next chapter of the tale may be taken in context. And if you have read it, possibly read it again as I revised the first part quite considerably before starting this next piece of work, as many memories flooded back to me.

Okay, all caught up?

One can become a metalhead through just the one starting album. But that hardly completes our tale. Much like metal itself was started by Black Sabbath, it later become refined by the likes of Judas Priest and Rainbow with albums like Sad Wings of Destiny and Rising respectively. It was perhaps only by the time of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal that we might consider metal to have been fully formed as a genre. Or at least, the first genre of it, heavy metal itself. An individual metalhead can form much the same way. Although many will probably cringe at the comparison, St. Anger was to me what Black Sabbath was to the formation of the genre. Which means the second chapter of the story into metaldum is the refinement stage. The turning point, if you will, before one can consider themselves the person and metalhead they are today.

But first, it's important to get caught up.

I gradually picked up the rest of the Metallica albums. And my view of Metallica basically went that the first five were excellent. I did not know enough about metal at this point in my life that I even realised that the Black Album was considered a different genre to the first four. I knew all five sounded a lot better than St. Anger though, so I wasn't listening to that album too much. I did not think much of either Load or ReLoad, but I liked the covers album Garage Inc. I thought that was pretty fun. I think I may have listened to S&M once and have not bothered again to this day.

In the wider metal world Dimebag Darrel had been murdered on stage in 2004, which was a rather Earth shattering experience for both my best mate 'C' and myself who'd both got heavily into Pantera in this time. That kind of thing just didn't happen to metal guitar idols in our world. Looking back I believe we took his death quite differently. I seem to recall that 'C' started listening to Pantera more, especially poignant tracks like Cemetery Gates and Hollow. I, on the other hand, found it difficult to listen to Pantera's music with the same enthusiasm for a long time. Every time I put it on I just imagined Dimebag getting gunned down while playing. My young mind could not handle it. And so Pantera never really had the chance to become the stepping stone band that they really could have been for me. They were certainly the most extreme thing I was listening to at the time. They were the spark, at least, but not the true turning point. That was to come soon though.

The year was now 2005, almost two whole years since the release of St. Anger. This was my last year in secondary school. One thing that did happen when that school year came to a close is that a lot of the group mentioned in Part 1 drifted apart. I still see 'C' to this day, but sadly have lost touch with some of the others. I was glad to see the back of 'L' though. 'L' really took things too far in 2005 by taking the piss out of the Dimebag murder. I'd never given a fuck about what 'L' thought of the music I liked but that crossed a line. I like to think that a few others realised what a dick he was by that point, but probably not. 'L' was just one of those people that others gravitated toward and became sycophants to. I have no idea what happened to 'L' after school finished. And I don't much care. Wherever he is I don't expect his taste in music has improved.

Things had changed at home with the arrival of a computer with the Internet the previous year, but I hadn't yet discovered YouTube, which first launched in early 2005. I expect that discovery came in 2006, which I see as the pivotal year as that's when my household first got Sky TV and I found the Scuzz station that led me to many early interests in metal. But in 2005 itself things hadn't improved much. 2006 would also be the year I subscribed to Metal Hammer, so the amount of progress made between St. Anger and then was pitiful. Foo Fighters and Nickelback were still in heavy rotation. The former had released In Your Honour (which I know I'm spelling wrong but sue me I'm English and we invented the language!) and the other had released All the Right Reasons. It had a pretty angry song on it about Dimebag's murder that really resonated. The late guitarist even played on it by virtue of a sampled guitar solo. Both albums were well liked by yours truly at the time, so that's evidence that my taste hadn't really moved on all that much. I look back more fondly on one of those albums today than the other. See if you can guess which one. 2006 would also mark my discovery of Iron Maiden, who at the end of that year became my first proper concert. But for now we're stuck in 2005 and the album that is the ultimate subject of this story was released. Ascendancy by metalcore band Trivium.

Before Metal Hammer, Scuzz and YouTube changed everything, it was actually a guitar magazine, which wasn't supposed to be metal specific but often did seem to focus on it, that provided the much needed resource that my younger self required. 'C' also benefited from this. It is how we found Pantera. We liked the guitar track the magazine had put on the CD for Cemetery Gates so much that I bought Cowboys From Hell without ever hearing Phil Anselmo's vocals. Total Guitar's free CDs though were also notable for sometimes including album tracks and this was how I got my first taste of growling vocals. I don't recall if it was Avenged Sevenfold or Arch Enemy I heard first, but both were among such bands featured. However the first such album I bought was Ascendancy. I do not actually remember when or how I first heard Trivium proper. I suspect they were featured as an album track with Total Guitar, or else maybe I'm misremembering the dates of all this and I didn't discover this album until it had been out a while. It was about fifteen years ago after all. Either way, Total Guitar was certainly how I first became aware of Trivium. There was a lot of Trivium hype going around at the time which carried over into Metal Hammer and online, as those avenues were opened up to me. They got airplay on both Kerrang and Scuzz. An important factor that piqued my interest was their branding as the next Metallica. 'Next Metallica' quickly became apparent as something that people in the media just liked to say. Mastodon got saddled with it as well around the same time.

Ascendancy remains one of only a few metalcore records I ever bought. The others mainly either being also by Trivium or were bought in second hand shops for no other reason than they were that cheap, the best result of such pot luck being the discovery of Protest the Hero. I'm sure there's probably stuff of more worth out there than I've heard, I have in fact in more recent years been drawn to a couple of acts like Converge and Erra. There's something very different about those bands though than the kind of metalcore played by Trivium and other more household metalcore names of the time though like Bullet for my Valentine, Caliban and Killswitch Engage. And in general it became a genre I don't hold much love for. Much like with St. Anger and it's sound that most accept as alternative metal, which was the genre a lot of my early metal bands belonged to, discovered both before and after this album. But although I don't much care for these genres these days and don't actively seek them out, they were both very crucial stepping stones for me. Which is why like with St. Anger I still hold a lot of appreciation for Ascendancy.

There's a big difference with this album to that one though. It is actually really fucking good.

My metal peers of the time, by then not generally people I grew up with but people I was encountering online, on the then very new YouTube (which was a much different website much then with much better community features including groups that served as a minimalist forum (my first experience with such a platform)), heavily disagreed with the hype of Trivium. In fact they were so put out by Trivium (like they'd been personally offended by their existence) that they'd start dedicated hate channels for the band on YouTube and take every opportunity to dish dirt on them, about where they'd stolen this or that riff from and so forth. Yeah, the spirit of metal wasn't doing too well in them days. While the 'experienced' metalheads were bashing bands like Trivium for all they were worth, the kids were starting rap verses metal flame wars and shouting about TR00 Trash Metal (accurate spelling of the day). All in all it was a much more toxic community than was really healthy for the developing metalhead.

Much like with the initial disapproval of my folks and peers over starting to listen to metal with St. Anger, this reaction from the supposedly more in the know metal crowd only fuelled me to stand against them. Hey, I was a teenager, we're supposed to rebel against our elders and their beliefs. Trivium was a band that allowed me to do that. It also in hindsight scratched an itch for more extreme music that proved a catharsis over lingering anger over Dimebag's murder that even Metallica's early thrash couldn't scratch.

But I'm in my thirties now and I have say that I think those 'in the know' metalheads of the time were wrong about Trivium, especially over this album. While it's true that Trivium is not a band I return to often, I still think that Ascendancy is a very accomplished album from the then young band, perhaps even a classic of its era. An album that does possibly show adolescence in its song-writing, but honestly it's more forgivable here considering the age of the band at the time. Matt Heafy was only 19 at the time of the album's release and that was only a couple of years older than I was! Old school metalheads of the time probably thought the kids should be looking up to the same bands as them (and maybe now it's our turn we do the same to the next generation and don't even realise it) and so vehemently rejected Heafy and his band Trivium, but to us who were of that sort age he was a figure to look up to.

Tracks like Rain, A Gunshot to the Head of Trepidation and Like Light to the Flies still find their way into regular random rotation from my PC media player and other tracks less frequently so. Because the YouTube haters of the day I'm afraid I can't listen to Pull Harder on the Strings of Your Martyr with a straight face any more because of a rather infamous misheard lyrics video which last time I checked could still be found on YouTube.

Unfortunately Trivium probably took the whole 'next Metallica' thing to heart, so their next album was The Crusade and it seemed designed to imitate Metallica as much as possible, which ultimately just gave fodder to their haters. But for me personally Ascendancy was the album that opened me up to extreme metal, broadened my horizons and opened the floodgates for all kinds of exciting new genres of metal that I began getting exposed to the following year during my gap between school and college. Like with St. Anger, I'll always hold a special place in my heart and collection for it. If it wasn't for this particular would I have become interested in other metal genres like death metal and black metal? Well probably eventually, but this album sure seemed to speed up the process. I was certainly starting to check those out on that first computer at home soon after this. It was the album that spurred me onward. I found genre after genre from that point on. Progressive metal through Dream Theater. Folk metal through Cruachan (one guy I met on YouTube was so insistent that I listen to Cruachan that he emailed by every song from Folk-Lore track by track - highly illegal of course, but Cruachan remains my favourite folk metal band and I own every album they've made so I think they'll forgive us). Black metal through Immortal. I could list every genre with a key band and it all branches out from Ascendancy, another album that was often maligned, although not to the extent of St. Anger.

This concludes the second chapter of this tale and I think it also has to be the last. The branching out starts here. I began to become fully formed as a metalhead. I'm still living the third chapter of this trilogy. Some probably thought I'd grow out of metal music and that would bring the story to a close.

I don't think it's going to happen.

Kingcrimsonprog Florida’s Trivium have been on a bit of a career high recently, with their album-of-the-year worthy previous album The Sin & The Sentence introducing the best drummer of their career and being the best collection of songs since their breakthrough. Momentum was high, as were expectations for their ninth album, 2020’s What The Dead Men Say.

For me, The Sin & The Sentence is basically the best album the band have ever released, and not even by a slim margin. It was a highlight of the whole subgenre. This album, while maybe not just as vital, breath-taking and relentless as that was, is definitely a worthy follow-up. Like the previous album, it has an absolutely perfect production job from Josh Wilbur, tasteful minimalist artwork, jaw dropping drums from Alex Bent and a musical direction that combines all the various aspects of all the different things they’ve tried over the years and pushes it in new directions too.

Whatever era of Trivium you like, be it the melodic and classic metal sounding Silence In The Snow style, the commercial Crusade style, the catchy and simplified Vengeance Falls style, the heavy Ascendancy & In Waves style… there’s a bit of everything, with all the good points and none of the bad. Its smooth, flowing, tasteful, and punchy. Its not cheesy, disjointed or boring. Basically, it’s a continuation or the absolute rage and perfection of the Sin & The Sentence style (although maybe a bit more melodic, with a few less blast-beats. I saw someone on social media call it Silence In The Sentence and I think that fits quite nicely).

There are some huge crunchy riffs, some excellent virtuoso solos and brilliant both harsh and clean vocals. Ever since Silence In The Snow, Matt Heafy’s vocals have been a whole other level, he’s as melodic and powerful as a Traditional Metal hero, and emotive without being cheesy or sacharine. There are some damn memorable choruses here. Its also succinct, with no filler, and the songs have complexity without overstaying their welcome.

Highlights include the harsh ‘Amongst The Shadows & The Stones’ the more direct and catchy ‘The Defiant’ and best of all, ‘Sickness Unto You’ which no Trivium fan should be without.

In the past, the band had a lot of detractors for a range of different reasons, suspicious elitists who didn’t like the youthful band wearing Overkill t-shirts and playing Thrash riffs in with their Metalcore, young fans who didn’t understand the band growing and evolving with each album, fans of one era but not another. Its really nice that now the majority of people are stopping having to be defensive about liking Trivium. When the material is of this quality, you just can’t cross your arms and deny them anymore. This album is superb, and if you don’t check it out, you really are missing out.

Kingcrimsonprog Let me say this quickly before you stop reading. This album is a fucking masterpiece. A gigantic game-changing triumph we didn’t expect! This is hands-down the best album of their career and a new high for the subgenre. An almost from out of nowhere about-face turn, skyrocketing them from diminishing returns to champions. No, I wasn’t expecting it either, but go with me on this…

Right, still reading? Ok, with that out of the way. Lets do the review.

Trivium have had a funny old career. Their output has been really varied. They’ve done some really heavy and some really melodic stuff. They’ve done some technical progressive stuff and some simplistic groovy stuff. They’ve gone brash and brutal and they’ve gone mature and commercial. Not only has their music been really varied but so have the reactions from both their fan-base and the critics for every album. Every new album seems to sees them pick up new fans they’ve never had before and lose diehards who hate the new material or direction. Critics in one territory or from one background may hate the early stuff and love the mid career stuff and its vice versa with critics from another territory or background. Some albums are beloved in Germany but forgotten in the UK. Some are cult classics in America but underrated gems in Europe.

Me, I’ve liked every single one of the bands albums. A few of them I’ve loved. Like the majority of fans I’d say the best three are Shogun, In Waves and Ascendancy. I also have a huge soft spot for Silence In The Snow too due to its Classic Metal and Power Metal vibes but I understand how some fans of the heavier or techier stuff aren’t into that one.

This album, even with all that said, is just straight up and unarguably in another damn league. The energy in the performances; the fantastic satisfying crunchy production, the best and most diverse vocals of their career, the best drummer they’ve ever had hands-down… these are all factors that elevate this album above the rest of their discography. As are the songs themselves.

The songs are some of the most diverse, inventive and interesting songs they’ve written musically and structurally to date. They mix a vast array of styles that the band have dipped their toes into over the years and a lot of new stuff to. They have some of the band’s most interesting and memorable riffs and solos to date. They take twists and turns you don’t expect and catch you off guard. They showcase all of the musician’s talents at times but leave space for the lyrics and vocals to take center stage at other times. Sometimes they’re haunting and beautiful and sometimes they’re furious and heavy as balls, just riffing the fuck out of a big groovy riff.

Do you remember back when Machine Head were new and they were the cool new thing, and then they altered their style and tried new vocal techniques and production styles and lots of fans jumped ship but then The Blackening came out, all full of energy and anger and just plain amazing songs and suddenly tore everyone’s heads off and now Machine Head are bone-fide legends? This album is Trivium’s equivalent of The Blackening. It doesn’t sound anything like it, but that step-up in quality and energy and absolute revitalization of their career? That’s the same!

A lot of people online and in print have been going nuts over The Sin And The Sentence and justly so. In a recent interview Trivium mainman Matt Heafy said that the band decided they would have to write the best album of their career or else give up because they are always second guessing themselves and changing their styles and going through as many drummers as Spinal Tap. Well, Trivium ‘aint giving up now, because this is unequivocally their best ever work. Maybe its because Paolo is writing more of the songs than Matt. Maybe its because they are letting some of their Black Metal and Skate Punk influences mix into things instead of trying to purely do a mix of Groove Metal, Thrash Metal and Classic Metal like their original mission statement. Maybe new drummer Alex Bent just injected a new lease of life into them like Todd La Torre did to Queensryche. I don’t know why, but this thing is just on a whole other level.

Its quite a diverse album that really doesn’t sit in any one space for too long. ‘Betrayer’ mixes Ascendancy-era brutality with Pennywise style Punk and a happy Power Metal lead guitar sheen, but ends up with blast beats in the middle. ‘Thrown Into The Fire’ is the darkest and heaviest thing they’ve ever done at times and has undertones of Dimmu Borgir, but then at other times is just an absolute riff and solo school that…ok maybe this one does sound a bit like The Blackening actually. ‘The Wretchedness Inside’ is the kind of thing they were doing on the heavier deep-cuts from In Waves mixed with some jaunty Prong-style disco beats and a guitar effect than almost recalls Damageplan on their weirder songs like ‘Blunt Force Trauma’ or ‘Explode,’ it also has a strange midsection that remind’s me of Slipknot’s ‘Custer’ but then it has one of the most satisfying and heavy riff-out moments like Messuggah or something and that transitions into really pretty, clean Maiden-esque guitar lines. ‘The Heart From Your Hate’ is probably the most conventional song on the album, and it mixes their ‘In Waves’ and ‘Brave This Storm’ style staccato riffing with their ‘And Sadness Will Sear’ style mature The Black Album-worshiping stuff.

For fans of the band’s heavier side ‘Sever The Hand’ pretty much alternates between especially crushing groove metal riffing and pissed off Thrash Metal sections throughout. Fans of the band’s cleaner more commercial side won’t be disappointed either. Although this is one of the band’s heaviest and most progressive and technical albums yet, there’s still some stuff to get into if you prefer the heart-throb-Heafy stuff they previously showcased on ‘Dying In Your Arms’ and the like. ‘Endless Night’ for example lives in that sort of territory. Its just got a hell of a lot more energy, verve and attitude to it. The drums and background guitars give it a cool sort of Coheed & Cambria quality rather than just radio rock.

I’d try to pick out highlights but the album doesn’t sit in any one place long enough (hell the songs don’t either) to really establish a good version of it. I wouldn’t cut a single track and I’d like to see each of them live. Its all great. Its all interesting and diverse. That’s “diverse,” yet really cleverly constructed and naturally flowing though, not wacky-“diverse” were stuff that doesn’t fit is just smashed together. This is an album you can listen to over and over again and find new depths, new nooks and crannies. ‘Oh hey I didn’t notice that cool drum fill before’ sort of stuff. Not “why are they playing a bassoon over old-school Tampa Death Metal riffs during their Lady GaGa cover?” sort of stuff.

Its hard to hand out a man of the match award either. Matt’s voice is so much better than its ever been (check out ‘Beauty In The Sorrow’). Paolo’s songwriting is so much better than its ever been. Corey’s guitar solos are just as good if not better than they were on the glorious guitar-line fueled Silence In The Snow. Oh yeah, and there’s Alex Bent, whose drumming absolutely makes the album. More than the cherry on top its almost the whole goddamn cake.

Overall, the Sin And The Sentence is an utter masterpiece. If you like Trivium do not miss out on this at all. If you used to like them and stopped, don’t you dare miss out on this one either, this is the one to get back into them on, seriously. If you’ve never listened to them I strongly urge you to change that. I’d even go as far as to say “If you only get one Trivium album, make it this.” This isn’t just a good Trivium album, or a good album, this is a game-changer.