Trivium – Corey Beaulieu

Trivium will soon be returning to Australia in support of the Soundwave festival across Australia, which will also include a special side show in Melbourne with special guests Anvil. Metal Obsession was lucky enough to chat to Corey Beaulieu about the bands upcoming tour, their new drummer and the band’s latest endeavors to write the next Trivium album.

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Metal Obsession: Good. We’ll start by talking about the new album. Is there a name you can announce yet?

Corey Beaulieu: Umm… not yet. You know, we’re still only just writing songs and stuff like that and working out the direction. Everyone’s sorta writing the same kind of stuff, so we’re just jamming and we have down about 4 or 5 tunes, so it’s moving on but we’re not really full on writing yet because we’re still touring a little bit and we’ve been rehearsing for that. And once we got off the tour in March, we’ll hopefully get into writing and then get into the studio late Summer, and the record will be out early 2011. So there’s still a while before we get into the fine details like album title. It’s still just early in the process.

MO: Do you think you’ll be going with the same artist you went with for Shogun or trying someone different?

Corey: We’ve got some new guys. I know with the last record the artwork was really last minute and we were pressed on time for what we really wanted, so we have this guy that Matt is friends with, who is a photographer, and he’s got someone he’s working with who’s a graphic designer. We’re gonna mix it up with some different people and go with a different direction and visual look for the band. We want something the really reflects the new music we’ve got. Over the last few years with Shogun we’ve definitely matured and we want everything else that goes with the record to show that.

MO: Is there are a concept for the new album?

Corey: The songs we’ve been working on we’re just jamming at the moment, but we wanted to go in the direction of our early stuff by writing about personal stuff and speaking from within and singing about stuff that we’re feeling, and writing stuff that our fans can relate to and really connect with. We wanted something that’s got more emotion and is much heavier than writing about mythological tales or news stories and stuff like that. We just wanted to be able to connect with it more on a personal level.

MO: Does everyone have a lot to do with the writing process?

Corey: Actually, it’s me, Paul and Matt. We write on our own, and then we present song ideas to each other. And then we give each other ideas and add parts together and collaborate and fine tune each others songs. Someone might bring in a couple of parts or half a song and then we’ll all jam on it and finish it. It’s great having a lot of songwriters because we always have a lot of material to choose from for a record rather than waiting for one person to write a whole record by themselves. Everyone writes in a slightly different way, but when it all comes together it all sounds like Trivium. Everyone has their own kind of variation of our style that blends well together.
MO: Every Trivium album has evolved quite a bit. Is there going to be a similar evolution with this album?

Corey: Ummm… it’s still Trivium. With every record we have done different things like styles and stuff like that, some songs might be more aggressive and some more melodic. We like the whole spectrum of metal. We just wanted to write catchier songs, you know, to make it a point to make these songs super catchy and just try to make great songs rather than worrying about how many riffs are in a song.  It’s kind of more of a mature sound.

Shogun had a lot of proggy stuff, and we just want to make the songs impact and make everything get stuck into your head. It’s kind of a more fine tuned style of song writing. It’ s kinda hard to say what’s going to be on the record because there’s kind of the more super heavy stuff with lots of screaming with an Ascendancy type vibe as well as the more melodic songs. There’s a lot of variation of stuff that we’ve done before, but we plan on recording more than what’s going to be on the record so we can release more music throughout the touring process so we don’t have to wait two years to release new music.

MO: With every Trivium record, there are a lot of people that say that Trivium have sold out or aren’t as good as what they once were. Does this really wear on your nerves as this happens after every album?

Corey: That’s just different people liking different things. Like, with The Crusade, it was kinda like the exact opposite of Ascendancy, so some people were a bit turned off. But there were lots of people that got into that record that didn’t like Ascendancy. The funny thing is, we didn’t play any of The Crusade songs on the set list on our US tour, and suddenly people were saying that was their favourite record. It’s not like we got this big commercial break from not doing any screaming, and there’s still a lot of thrashy, heavy songs on that record.

It just didn’t have the same dynamic as Ascendancy did. With Shogun we tried to meld the two together, and we have a new song coming out next week with a lot of screaming as well as the traditional Trivium clean vocals and hooks in it. It’s all just kind of like a moment in time and it depends on what we’re feeling.

MO: The song that’s coming out next week, is that Shattering the Skies Above?

Corey: Yeah. It’s supposed to come out sometime next week. Since it’s going with the God of War thing we had to wait for Sony to give us the OK to let it out. I don’t know if it affects their marketing of the game or what not but we’re hoping to get the song out on the fan club website and a few days later get it out on the street for everyone else to hear.

MO: Now that Shogun’s been out for a while, do you look back and wish that you did anything differently?

Corey: Umm… not really. You know, we’re really happy with that record and the songs and everything. Some of the stuff we were really rushed on time and everything and I kind of wish we had more time for everything, but I don’t think there was anything wrong with the songs in particular. Some things we learned , and we think how could we have done this better, but we try to just incorporate that into our new songs, as that was the best we could do at the time. I wish we had more time to mix it, as the guy who was doing it was over in England, and because of the time difference it was hard to relay information back and forth. We can always nitpick, but the songs are killer live and fun to play, and the fans love them so we can’t ask for anything more.

MO: For an international band, you definitely come to Australia more than a lot of other bands? Is there anything that draws you back again and again?

Corey: Umm… well the great thing about it is that we keep getting asked to come back. The promoter down there offers to do some really cool things, and fortunately for us there’s some really rabid, die hard fans down there and if we didn’t have those fans there we wouldn’t be offered tours or anything to keep coming back. It just shows that every time we come back people want us to come back. We’re excited to come back. Ever since we played Big Day Out we have loved Australia. It’s great that after such a super long travel we know the shows are going to be amazing and that it’s gonna kick arse. Hopefully with Soundwave festival we will be able to showcase our music to new fans and convert them into Trivium fans.

MO: Do you prefer playing festivals or do you prefer headlining gigs?

Corey: Ahh… both of them are fun. Headlining, you know it’s going to kick arse because it’s your fans and you have more control over everything. Festival vibes are always fun because there’s lots of bands and people and its just a great atmosphere. And its also a great way to showcase your music to fans that otherwise wouldn’t hear your music or wouldn’t get it, and hopefully get them to say “Yeh that band was killer, I’m gonna go buy their record.”

MO: Are you a big fan of any of the other bands or are you friends with on the Soundwave bill?

Corey: Well we toured with Whitechapel a lot. We had them on our tour in the US. And they’re opening for us in NZ and they’re coming over to England with us on our headlining tour straight after. I also know some of the guys from Anthrax who are playing. Through doing Big Day Out we met some of the guys form My Chemical Romance and they were really cool. It’s a different genre of music but we were pretty much the only metal band at Big Day Out, so we got introduced to them at a dinner party or something like that, so we’ll probably say hey to them as well.

MO: Will you be playing any new songs at either Soundwave or the sideshow?

Corey: Umm… Soundwave we’ll be playing the new song Shattering the Skies Above. And we’ve been rehearsing a ton of songs for the tour and we’re gonna try to play a lot of songs at Soundwave and on the headlining tour that we haven’t played before in Australia. So people who have seen us on previous tours, hopefully they will see some tracks that they have been wanting to see live.

MO: Are there any older songs that you are sick of playing and will be dropping out of any set lists?

Corey: Not really. You know we have our older songs, kinda like the mandatory you’ve gotta play songs. Other than that, if we get bored or have played a song a lot we just rotate it out and put a new one in. Lately we’ve been playing songs that we haven’t played for 3 or 4 years, so it’s cool to kinda get away from songs and come back to it, and it’s good to keep it fresh and make it fun. There’s some in the set list we haven’t played for quite a while, we haven’t played some of them since the Ascendancy tour.

MO: Since you guys have gained in popularity, has Ember to Inferno gained appreciation?

Corey: There are a lot of people who know that record. You know, for being an early record and not having a big label and promotion behind it, it sold fairly well, and people seem to know the songs so when we headline we always have at least two Ember songs to play, and that way people might think, oh I didn’t know they had a record before Ascendancy. So we just like to give people an idea that there is a little hidden gem they might not be aware of if they haven’t heard that record before.

MO: Will Travis be playing drums at the Australian shows?

Corey: Umm… no he will not.

MO: Will that Travis’ drum tech Nick Augusto playing those shows?

Corey: Yep, yeh Nick’s playing with us on the upcoming tours.

MO: I wanted to talk about your guitar playing. What influenced you to play guitar as a kid?

Corey: Well the first player that got me interested in playing guitar, the first band ever, like hard rock metal band was Guns n Roses and I was really intrigued by Slash. And I had the live Use Your Illusion, live in Tokyo videos and I used to watch those religiously. And I just really, really loved his whole vibe and everything. I really wanted to play guitar but my parents pulled the bluff on me and said if I was serious and saved up half the money for it they would pay the other half. But I never really saved a whole lot of money. Doing some research on Guns n Roses and stuff I came across Metallica, and I borrowed Master of Puppets from a friend who didn’t listen to it and I was like “Dude, I need to fucking get a guitar”. Metallica took my interest and made it die-hard.

Once I got one, it was all over form there and I was hooked on it. Then I just started discovering new bands and it just snowballed and I got into everything from Euro Power metal to Death metal. It’s a little bit of everything, but I was really inspired by Metallica, Megadeth, like Mustaine and Friedman, George Lynch from Dokken is my favourite, Malmsteen, Alex Skolnick from Testament. I just loved the guys who I could sing along to their shit and the guys who wrote solos that were memorable and kinda like a little mini-song in the song.

MO: Were you really regimented with your practice as a kid?

Corey: Yeh, I practised as much as I could. I played a lot of sports so I was pretty busy with that but when I got home I played as long as I could. I tried to learn as much as I could, but you can’t really practice for eight hours a day. But you don’t really need to play for that long. It’s all about how you use your time, and if you actually focused on what you wanted to improve on you can practice for two hours and you don’t necessarily have to play all day. If I wanted to improve on something that my guitar teacher showed me, I would take what little time I had to focus on that, but if I had a whole day I would just noodle around and write music and learn covers and whatever.

MO: Do you and Matt get pretty competitive with your guitar playing? Is there any rivalry?

Corey: Not really. We just kinda divvy up solos, and I might lay down a solo and he’ll be like, “Yeh you really upped the anti so I’m gonna have to go one further. It’s not like we’re competitive about who has the cooler solos though. We’ve been doing it for so long it’s more about making the songs as cool as we can. It doesn’t matter if I’m shredding the whole song while Matts just playing a little melodic sort of thing.

MO: Have you ever written anything that Matt has had trouble playing?

Corey: Umm the only thing, there’s a couple of songs on Shogun. It’s not that he can’t particularly play them, but I write a lot of fast down picking stuff and its really hard to play these guitar parts because sometimes the picking pattern and the vocal line don’t match up, so it’s kinda hard to sing and play the guitar for those songs at the same time.

That was one of our downfalls, because I used to write my guitar parts whilst Matt would work on his lyrics separately. We’re doing a lot of working on the lyrics and the vocal lines whilst we’re writing the music so it’s very open and breathing and it’s not about cramming a lot of words into a small amount of space. With the new songs we’re definitely trying to correct that problem.

MO: You guys have done some massive things, such as touring with Maiden and Metallica. Do you ever think about what’s next. Do you think about selling out stadiums of 40,000 fans?

Corey: We’re just kinda trying to improve the band and get better and write better songs. Our dream was always to be a really big band and to write music that people love. It’s a different world to back in the 80s when everyone was playing stadiums, but it’s a lot harder now, so it doesn’t hurt to strive to do that.

MO: Do you ever think about how long Trivium will be around?

Corey: We’ll do it as fucking long as possible. Compared to a lot of bands, we’re still really young so we’ve still got a lot of time to play music, so we’re not going to stop anytime soon. We’ll do it in our mid 40s if we have to.
MO: When Trivium does come to an end eventually, how do you want the band to be remembered?

Corey: Just hopefully that we accomplished something that people will remember us for , did everything we wanted and we achieved the goals in our life and career, and we went out on a high note, just knowing that we did everything we dreamed of as a kid.

MO: Did you have anything final you wanted to say to the Australian fans?

Corey: Hopefully we see everyone at Soundwave and we look forward to playing for everybody again. Keep out eye out for next week when the new song gets released. This will be our last time down there for Shogun and next time we come back we will have a new record, so make sure you come and see us as we won’t be back for a while.

Q’s: Steven Inglis
A’s: Corey Beaulieu (Lead Guitars)
Date: 12/02/2010
Origin: USA
www.myspace.com/trivium

www.trivium.org

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