TRIVIUM Guitarist On Touring And 'Shogun'

Raymond Ahner of Ground Control magazine recently conducted an interview with guitarist Corey Beaulieu of Florida metallers TRIVIUM. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Ground Control: So what's next as far as touring?

Corey: After this [the U.S. tour with SLIPKNOT], we have a couple of headlining shows to get us back to Florida, then we have a little break, and sometime in the beginning of May we are opening for SLIPKNOT for four shows up in Canada. Then from Canada we fly to Japan for some headlining shows there, and then right to Australia. After that I think we have a small break before we head of to Europe to do some festivals, then we hit the Rockstar Mayhem tour, so we definitely have a lot of international traveling this summer.

Ground Control: Wow, that a pretty fuckin' full schedule...

Corey: Yeah, we are pretty much going to the end of the year, because after summer we are scheduling a massive headlining tour, since we haven't really had one in the U.S. since '06. Looks like it's going to be twelve weeks and we'll be playing pretty much everywhere we have been with SLIPKNOT so our new fans can see us play a full TRIVIUM show. I think we are also hitting some places we have never played before, which will be pretty cool. We are going to try to hit every cavern of the fuckin' U.S. this year, and are pushing to build up our U.S. fan base like we've been able to do with Europe, Japan and Australia. Now it's time to get the homeland rockin'. There will be a lot of touring in the States this year.

Ground Control: Who have been some of your favorite bands that you've been on tour with recently?

Corey: We've been hanging out with some of the guys from SLIPKNOT on this tour, and they've all been awesome, and have been a great band to tour with. We've been treated really well. We are also really good friends with the guys from MACHINE HEAD. We've toured with them all over the world, and have become really good friends with them as well. Touring with [IRON] MAIDEN was great, CHILDREN OF BODOM was a fun tour. GOD FORBID were great, they were the ones that took us out on our first tour. We have made a lot of cool friends from a lot of different band. Metal bonding, I guess!

Ground Control: So let's talk about the new record, "Shogun", for a few. Have you been pleased with the response it's gotten thus far?

Corey: Yeah, we were really stoked making and recording this record. Everyone was in such a good mind set and having so much during the creating process. We felt we had something that our fans were really going to be into. And ever since we put the first single out the response has been really positive. There has been a lot of word of mouth about it, and people seem to be going out and picking it up, even in this day and age of poor CD sales and record labels folding, we have really been happy with the way things have been going. It seems that even if people haven't picked it up they have heard the tracks or streamed it online. Hearing people's reactions while being out on tour has already got us writing the next one, and trying to push it to the next level.

Ground Control: Opening for bands like MAIDEN and SLAYER, do you feel like you been able to convert some of the older generation metalheads into TRIVIUM fans?

Corey: Some of them. I think people that go to see some of the older bands have been following them for a long time, and might not have heard of us. After the MAIDEN tour, we did our own tour and you could see that the demographic of the audience had broadened a bit. Even when we were on that MAIDEN tour, the majority of the audience was younger kids, and it seemed that they had a whole new generation of fans, who probably got into them through their parents. Even SLAYER have done a really good job of having some of the younger bands touring with them, and having a fresh audience. We have been meeting some veteran metalheads that have been turned onto our music. It's been pretty cool that people who have been into metal for so long can appreciate what the young cats are putting out.

Ground Control: Speaking of the feel of "Shogun", do you feel like working with Nick Raskulinecz helped defined the TRIVIUM sound on this record?

Corey: When we met him it was a really good vibe, and with the way he works he was definitely the right choice for this record. We got along with him really well, and he really fit in with the band's personality, and just us in general. We had played him some of the demos we had already recorded, and he really liked the direction we were going for, which was how we made the earlier records, where we were just all in a room jamming and writing shit spontaneously and feeding off of each other. And then he just came in and really just pushed it to the next level. I called it "heavy metal boot camp," because we would have to play the same songs like forty times in a row, and I was like, "Holy shit, I'm really sick of this song' (laughing). He would make a few changes or just throw an idea at us. He really helped us focus, and to take some of the songs and pick them apart and re-arrange them, and make the whole song flow better. It was little things like that that made us feel the song a little more. He would say stuff like, "Hey, that riff sucks," to bring us out of our comfort zone or box and make us think differently than we were used to. He pushed us to be more creative and open the box. He would leave and let us do stuff on our own for a while. He really showed us a different way of making the album and it really helped us creatively. He was a great addition to the process, and really made what we had in our heads come to life on the record. We are really stoked on him.

Read the entire interview from Ground Control magazine.