TRIVIUM Guitarist: SLIPKNOT 'Was Definitely The Best Tour We've Ever Done In The States'

Spiritech of PyroMusic.net recently conducted an interview with guitarist Corey Beaulieu of Florida metallers TRIVIUM. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

PyroMusic.net: How's the SLIPKNOT tour been going?

Corey Beaulieu: Ah, that was amazing, that was one of the best tours out of any tour we've done, but it was definitely the best tour we've ever done in the States and the biggest. Their crowds were really killer and they were really open and receptive to us. So it did us a lot of good and we got to play in front of a lot of people who'd never heard of us before. It was a really killer tour, so we were stoked that they asked us to be on it. So it'll be fun to play a couple more shows with them up in Canada.
PyroMusic.net: Is that kind of the point where you guys are at now, that you've established a high profile of your own and draw strong crowds to your headlining shows, so you need to look further afield and play with bands like that with fans who may not know about you?

Corey Beaulieu: Yeah, I mean SLIPKNOT is definitely a heavy band and they have a lot of heavy fans and stuff, but especially in America they're a really big radio rock band, they sell a lot of records and reach a lot of people who hear about them on the radio but don't necessarily know much about bands like us who aren't played on mainstream radio all the time. So they'll come out to a show, they're into the heavy stuff and they hear us... They come to the show for SLIPKNOT and they get turned on to a new band who that they would otherwise have probably never heard before. So it's been good for us, we've had a lot of people that would be fans but haven't had a chance to hear us yet. It was a really good way to bridge the gap of potential fans that don't have, or haven't had the ability to hear our music. It was a great tour, so we couldn't have asked for anything better! (laughs)

PyroMusic.net: "Shogun" received some of the best reviews of the band's career thus far. Did that surprise you at all?

Corey Beaulieu: It was cool, because, I think, from the last couple of records, they were so different from each other that we really kinda killed any kind of expectation level as far as what it was going to sound like. People had no clue what it was going to sound like so they went into it open-minded and people seem to really like it, it got really good reviews and stuff. From "Ascendancy" to "The Crusade", the "Ascendancy" album did so well and had so much praise when it came out that there was such a high expectation level for the follow-up and it's usually never good enough or whatever in some people's eyes. I think with this one there wasn't really any high expectation level for what it was supposed to be like and it ended up being a really killer record, so everyone was just really stoked about it. I think it really kind of blends everything we've done kind of into our own kind of sound. I think it really showed people what our style is, what we're supposed to sound like (laughs). It was really good, it's always nice to get a lot of positive reviews so we're really pleased about that. You know you're doing something right if you get a lot of positive stuff. If the majority is bad then that's no fun! (laughs)

PyroMusic.net: 2005's "Ascendancy" was the band's breakthrough album, and while it won you a lot of new fans it also resulted in plenty of criticism from long-time metallers who seemed to feel that the band hadn't paid their dues. Do you feel that you've silenced the majority of those critics now?

Corey Beaulieu: Before that record came out we'd be touring for like a year, it wasn't like we just came out of nowhere. The record, when "Ascendancy" first came out it was a slow builder. For what it sold when it first came out (it) was really good and that had to do with a lot of the touring that we did up until it came out and then we just toured non-stop and played shows. You don't have to like slum yourself for fucking like five years in small clubs you know, we were playing as many shows as we possibly could and our music just really hit people and people wanted to buy the record and wanted to come to our shows. The record really took off and it wasn't because we weren't doing anything, it was just because we were doing a lot of work and it just seemed to be paying off, people were really responding to what we were doing. A lot of people were jealous and like, "what the fuck? They're a bunch of young kids and blown past some other bands that have been doing it for a while." It was really cool for us, 'cause we were excited about the record that we had been working on for so long was getting a really great reaction and people were really into it. We were having fun with it and just kind of took it all in our stride and tried to ignore as much of the negative as we could and try and enjoy the experience of what it's like on the rise up, like from being nobody to actually people knowing who you are. So it was a lot of fun, it definitely helped us grow and was a good learning experience for further down the road (laughs).

Read the entire interview from PyroMusic.net.