Shogun - Trivium (2009)

Up till recently, to me, Trivium was one of those bands who sound fucking amazing on records but sucked absolute dognuts in live performances. But after I heard about their new album, Shogun, I decided to check them out anyway.

Now, their studio stuff sounds great, but more importantly they have matured significantly as live performers. The band seems to have found the right vibe and direction in their music and for a relatively young band, with the average band member age still at around 24 and half years old, their success is rather impressive. They have accumulated some valuable experience through 3 studio releases and years of touring prior to the production of Shogun.

When I put the record on, one of the first things that came to my mind was that this album tried to cater to the fans and critics as much as they can. At the same time, I did not get the impression that they were overreacting and musically ‘giving in’ to the whipcrack of criticism.

Another thing I noticed:
THEY BROUGHT BACK THE FUCKING SHOUTING AND SCREAMO BACK!!!
FUCK YEAAAAAAH!!!

As I mentioned earlier, their live performances were a huge letdown in contrast to their studio recordings. Quite often, the instruments would be badly tuned – shame on the guitar techs for that one. But more importantly, the band would dash through all the songs around 20 bpm faster than the recordings, which kept the mosh happy but in turn severely compromised the quality of their performances. The vocalist would run out of breath and guitar solos were ruined by frequent mistakes… While I can’t call them master performers yet, they’ve impressed me in recent clips.

The songs “Kirisute Gomen” and “Down from the Sky” got me completely hooked after I listened to it only twice. Frontman Matt Heafy points out “For the first time, we can't look at our songs and say who the riffs sound like. We're really making our own stuff and our own kind of music”. Although it is easy to notice a significant resemblance to Master of Puppets-era Metallica, the modern edge and aggression without going over the top is what makes this Trivium and this new album stand out amongst modern metal bands.