Grammy-nominated heavyweights TRIVIUM — vocalist/guitarist Matthew K. Heafy; guitarist Corey Beaulieu; bassist Paolo Gregoletto; and drummer Alex Bent — have announced the release of their forthcoming, three-song EP “Struck Dead”. It arrives on October 31 via longtime label Roadrunner.
While it may only be three songs in length, in typical TRIVIUM fashion, it packs a powerhouse punch, thanks to masterful riffing and the dual-style vocal prowess the band has built its nearly three-decade reputation on. It was produced by TRIVIUM and recorded with Mark Lewis at the band’s Hangar Studios in Orlando, Florida. It was mixed and mastered by Josh Wilbur.
Today, the band also shares the video for the first single “Bury Me With My Screams”. The song premiered via Heafy‘s “Chaos Hour” show on SiriusXM Liquid Metal and will be debuted live in the band’s headline set at Bloodstock Open Air festival this Friday night. Watch the music video below.
“In 2023, we decided it was finally time to take the next step with The Hangar space we purchased — it was time to turn it into a full studio,” says Gregoletto. “We brought in designer Roger D’Arcy, thanks to an introduction from Mark Lewis, and set out on a year-long build. While construction was underway, we were deep in rehearsals for ‘The Poisoned Ascendancy’ tour, celebrating ‘Ascendancy’‘s 20th anniversary. What started as an idea to release one single during the tour quickly grew into two, then three, as we kept writing while we were waiting for the build-out to be completed.”
He continues: “During that time, the energy of revisiting ‘Ascendancy’ started bleeding into these new songs. Matt poured a lot of his personal struggles from the past year into the music, and we used the writing process as a cathartic release. Those sessions evolved into a three-song EP that we’re incredibly proud of, and we can’t wait to debut ‘Bury Me With My Screams’ live at Bloodstock Open Air festival.”
“Struck Dead” EP track listing:
01. Bury Me With My Screams
02. Struck Dead (Pain Is Easier To Remember)
03. Six Walls Surround Me
While TRIVIUM may be debuting their brand new track at Bloodstock Open Air festival this weekend, its exposure won’t stop there. European fans can also be in with a chance of witnessing this new era on a string of European dates this month, with USA appearances close behind.
TRIVIUM will embark on “The Ascend Above The Ashes” trek that kicks off October 31 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and runs through December 14, with an epic hometown show in Orlando, Florida. Special guests are JINJER and HERIOT.
Five years ago, 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 recent interview with Neil Jones of TotalRock, Gregoletto was asked if having no time constraints due to TRIVIUM 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: “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 in July, Beaulieu was asked by U.K.’s Primordial Radio 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‘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.
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.
“Ascendancy” ignited a string of six consecutive Top 25 debuts on the Billboard 200 and five straight Top 3 debuts on the Top Hard Rock Albums chart, culminating on 2017’s benchmark “The Sin And The Sentence”. That album elevated the group’s total stream tally past a quarter of a billion. Additionally, “Betrayer” received a Grammy Award nomination in the category of “Best Metal Performance”. Unanimous acclaim followed from Decibel, Loudwire, Ultimate Guitar, MetalSucks and Metal Hammer, who dubbed them “quite simply one of the best bands in modern metal.” 2020 brought LP “What The Dead Men Say”. The album was produced by TRIVIUM and Josh Wilbur and debuted at No. 35 on the Billboard 200; at No. 2 on the Top Current Albums chart, and at No. 3 on both the Hard Rock Albums chart and Top Rock Albums chart.
TRIVIUM has performed alongside METALLICA, BLACK SABBATH, IRON MAIDEN, and many others, and graced the main stages of Download, Bloodstock, Knotfest and beyond.
