Five years ago, Florida-based metallers TRIVIUM used profits generated from a livestreamed concert to purchase a decommissioned airplane hangar. The Orlando facility is now serving as the band’s headquarters for both recording and rehearsing, in addition to being a place where TRIVIUM can store its equipment. In a new interview with Neil Jones of TotalRock, TRIVIUM bassist Paolo Gregoletto was asked if having no time constraints due to the band owning a professional recording studio made it harder for him and his bandmates to finalize ideas and put the finishing touches on new recording projects. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “I would say that we are pretty good at that, where we kind of know when it’s time to kind of do stuff. So I guess, in a good way, there’s always some sort of clock ticking. We’re just kind of, like, ‘Okay, we have this tour coming up’ or ‘we have these festivals coming up’, let’s say we have five or six months, we know we have this much time. It’s enough time to put the level of attention into the songs to jam it, blah, blah, blah, but not enough time to be, like, ‘Okay, we’re making ‘Chinese Democracy’ again here, and we’re taking 10 years.’ And of course, even owning a studio and owning all these things, we can’t afford to have top producers and mixers at our disposal for years at a time. So we’re pretty good, I think, at getting in, doing the work, but we always just wanna play the songs a lot more, kind of feel it out. And I think our best stuff is just when we jam together as a band and we’re, like, ‘Oh, it feels good. Bringing that energy into the studio is where the magic is, at least for us.”
Asked if he and his TRIVIUM bandmates have ever considered producing one of their albums themselves and not working with an outside producer, Paolo said: “Well, this [upcoming TRIVIUM] EP, I don’t wanna say it was fully self-produced, but it’s probably the most we’ve done. It kind of was just, like, we were building the studio and we really had no sort of… We weren’t, like, ‘Okay, this is the start of the record.’ We were kind of, like, ‘We’re gonna go in there. We’re gonna record at least one song,’ because that was always the goal, is have one song to drop during ‘The Poisoned Ascendancy [Tour]’ [with BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE] at some point. And it became two songs. Then it became three songs. Then we were, like, ‘Well, maybe this is the start of the [full-length] record.’ And then we kind of got in there and started recording, and then we got on tour. And then we were, like, ‘Okay, this feels like a good EP.’ We’ve never done an EP before, and it felt like these songs were, like, this is our test run of the studio. This is kind of, like, day one, studio’s open. We’re doing stuff for the first time. And then we were, like, ‘Let’s just give ourselves a little more time for a new album.’ But we didn’t wanna keep people waiting too much with new music, so it was kind of a fun new thing for us. And it’s been a fun experiment because an EP, it’s different. You don’t have the full expectations of a full record. But we spent a lot of time — we spent about two or three months just on the three songs, just writing, jamming, waiting for the studio to be built and finished. And then we went in there and it was a pretty hectic last half of the year, last year going into the tour. I had a kid, our second, Alex [Bent, TRIVIUM drummer] had a kid, his second, so it was, like, we were in between babies being born and lots of crazy stuff. We were, like, ‘Okay, get in there and do the drums. Okay. We’ll see you in a couple weeks. Come back. Okay, we’ll get the guitars and the vocals.’ So it was a wild end of the year. But it was fun, man. It was just, like, ‘Oh, man, we’re in our own studio right now. This feels awesome.’ It’s as comfortable as being home.”
Earlier this month, TRIVIUM guitarist Corey Beaulieu confirmed to U.K.’s Primordial Radio, that a new song from him and his bandmates should arrive within the next week, prior to their appearance at this year’s Bloodstock Open Air festival (taking place August 7-10). Regarding how and when the song will be rolled out, Corey said: “Well, I guess to protect me if I say something I’m not supposed to… Basically, it’s gonna drop before… I can’t remember the exact day, but it’s supposed to come out before we play Bloodstock, ’cause we’re gonna play it at Bloodstock. So, I guess that would be anywhere the first week of August. So within that timeframe.”
He continued: “We’ve been hinting at this song online with clips and everything for a while, so people know it’s coming. They just don’t know exactly when. But it’s gonna be before we start this tour, so the first week of August, in that timeframe, it’s gonna drop, I believe. We’ve been filming some content and stuff to promote it, leading up to it, so there’s gonna be a lot more ramping up to totally piss everyone off, ’cause they’d been just waiting for new music. So every time you post a snippet or a clip or some kind of teaser, it makes people more mad. So it’s gonna ramp up, ’cause they just want the song.”
Asked if TRIVIUM‘s recent tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of the band’s second album and Roadrunner debut, “Ascendancy”, affected the songwriting process for TRIVIUM‘s new music, Corey said: “Well, last year we would get together and we were rehearsing ‘Ascendancy’, and in between the rehearsals we started writing some new songs. ‘Cause, obviously, we’ve got the studio being built. When it gets done, we wanna have something ready to kind of break it in, get the studio up and running. So we started writing some songs. And there was no real, I guess, game plan, ’cause we weren’t in the head space of, ‘We’re writing a record.’ It was just, like, ‘Hey, let’s just write some songs and just kind of let it be what it is.’ We’d rehearse ‘Ascendancy’ on a Monday and then Wednesday we would be, like, ‘All right, we’re just gonna work on writing some stuff.’ And we kind of summed it up as the couple songs that we wrote, it was kind of like spirit animals of ‘Ascendancy’, where it was, like, we were rehearsing ‘Ascendancy’ and we kind of used the energy and playing those songs, and we were, like, ‘Oh, let’s kind of parlay that into new music.’ And the new stuff definitely has kind of the spirit of ‘Ascendancy’, but also a lot of kind of what we do now kind of blended in. So I think just focusing on playing ‘Ascendancy’ definitely carried over into the writing of just trying to, I guess, capture that intensity and energy of what that record was. And when we played the stuff to some friends and stuff like that, they were just, like, ‘Oh, shit.’ This has got some pretty intense stuff. The first song coming out definitely is a very — I guess maybe the closest comparison might be ‘Rain’, in a sense of just something right in your face, fast, very aggressive. So, it’s definitely gonna be cool.”
Elaborating on TRIVIUM‘s plans to release new music, Corey said: “When we did the stuff, the intention was we thought we were gonna be doing the ‘Ascendancy’ tour from January to December, doing a full tour. And then the idea was we were gonna record a couple songs and then just release ’em as singles kind of as the year goes on for the tour, kind of, like, ‘Hey, we’re coming to South America.’ Oh, new song drops. Or we’re going there, and just releasing standalone singles. ‘Cause it’s been so long since we put out a record, it was kind of, like, ‘Hey, let’s give the fans some new stuff to listen to while we’re doing the anniversary stuff.’ And then once that abruptly ended, we kind of pivoted to doing an EP. So we’re just gonna put everything out at one time. We’re working on some really cool, special vinyl stuff, some collectible stuff. So kind of do a little special mini-release before we are able to get a [full] record done. So, kind of wanting to give the fans, since it’s been a little bit of a wait to get ’em some new stuff to listen to, hold ’em over until we’re able to finish up a new album.”
TRIVIUM will embark on the “Ascend Above The Ashes” tour this fall. The trek will kick off October 31 in Myrtle Beach and runs though December 14, with an epic hometown show in Orlando. Special guests JINJER will appear, while HERIOT will serve as support.
While the tour will continue to celebrate the 20th anniversary of TRIVIUM‘s landmark “Ascendancy” album, fans can also expect new music soon. TRIVIUM will also make appearances at Louder Than Life and Aftershock this fall.
TRIVIUM and BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE recently teamed up for “The Poisoned Ascendancy” tour during which the two bands celebrated the 20th anniversary of “Ascendancy” and “The Poison” albums, respectively, by playing them in full.
Produced by Live Nation, the North American leg of “The Poisoned Ascendancy” kicked off on March 30 at PNE Forum in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, making stops across North America in Las Vegas, Chicago, New York and more before wrapping up in Raleigh, North Carolina at Red Hat Amphitheater on May 18.
Released in March of 2005, TRIVIUM crafted a classic in the form of “Ascendancy”. It concluded 2005 as Kerrang!‘s “Album Of The Year,” went gold in the U.K., and has since surpassed global sales of 500,000 copies. Opening the main stage of Download festival that year, the Floridian four piece — barely out of their teens — delivered a set that left all who witnessed it in no doubt that they were looking at future legends, with Kerrang! readers later voting it as the tenth best gig of all time.
TRIVIUM‘s latest album, “In The Court Of The Dragon”, came out in October 2021 via TRIVIUM‘s longtime label Roadrunner Records. The record was produced and mixed by Josh Wilbur and recorded in the fall of 2020 at Full Sail University in Orlando. The album cover is an original oil painting by French artist Mathieu Nozieres.
