Album Reviews : Trivium – In Waves

If you have been a long time Trivium fan, you would know how hard it is to tell what sub-genre they’re gunna do next. One year they’re doing thrash songs, next year they’re back to metal core, and so on. It’s came to the point where you can’t really label Trivium under any particular metal genre, because they’ve covered a lot of them. With Nick Augusto joining on drums last year, and the release of their song “Shattering the Skies Above”, Trivium fans were expecting their next release to be a bit like their previous album Shogun (2008), but this release has shocked a lot of diehard fans.

The new albums sound is based on their signature modern metal core, but also influenced by thrash metal and death metal/core. It is a critical success, and has had a lot of mixed feedback from metal fans, but like every other Trivium release, I enjoy it. It sure as hell isn’t their greatest album, but it’s still got some kick ass songs on there.

The opener of the album is called “Capsizing the Sea”, which is just a piano intro of the title track “In Waves”. The instruments build up slowly, and then Matt belts out a ferocious “IN WAAAAAVES!!” to a standard Drop C# breakdown. This song is repetitive and it didn’t really get my attention after the first listen, but the more I listened to it, the more I started to enjoy it.

“Chaos Reigns” is my absolute favourite off this album. Matt and Corey are both powerhouses when it comes to screams, even if they don’t enjoy doing it. This song is half filled with thunderous blast beats and has face-melting guitar solo. Any fans of Trivium’s first two albums Ember to Inferno and Ascendancy would definitely dig this.

Like they have done with most of their albums, Trivium added a cover song to the special edition. The one thing they have always done well at is doing a kick ass cover of a kick ass song. After proving that with their covers of Iron Maiden’sself titled song and Metallica’s “Master of Puppets”, they’ve done an outstanding job again with a cover of Sepultura’s “Slave New World”.

Although Trivium have put a lot of time and effort into this album, and “matured” their sound, it isn’t the greatest thing they have ever written. It’s a lot less technical than most of their older stuff, but some of the songs really stand out, the solos are shredded as always and Matt has taken both his cleans and screams to a new level. The album isn’t a major disappointment as a lot of people say so, but it makes me wonder; if this is their matured sound, and they change after every album, then what will their future songs sound like? 8/10

Band: Trivium
Album: In Waves (Special Edition)
Year: 2011
Genre: Metal core
Label: Roadrunner Records
Origin: Orlando, Florida (USA)
http://www.trivium.org/

Track listing:
1. Capsizing the Sea
2. In Waves
3. Inception of the End
4. Dusk Dismantled
5. Watch the World Burn
6. Black
7. A Skyline’s Severance
8. Enslaving the Sun
9. Built to Fall
10. Caustic Are The Ties That Bind
11. Forsake Not The Dream
12. Drowning in Slow Motion
13. A Grey So Dark
14. Chaos Reigns
15. Of All These Yesterdays
16. Leaving This World Behind
17. Shattering the Skies Above
18. Slave New World (Sepultura cover)