TRIVIUM Guitarist: When We Wrote 'In Waves', We Wanted To Put A Stamp On Our Sound

Jeffrey Easton of Metal Exiles recently conducted an interview with guitarist Corey Beaulieu of Florida metallers TRIVIUM. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Metal Exiles: When you sat down to write "In Waves", you had several ways to lean like with "Shogun", "The Crusade" and you found a way to combine all three. Is this where you guys are at right now in knowing what you want?

Corey: In writing the record, we wanted to make sure everything was cohesive and flowed really well. We did not want an oddball song in there, [we] just wanted the record to flow together. We wrote a lot of stuff and if it did not fit the overall vibe of the record, we dropped it and keep writing. A lot of stuff came easily to us, and there is a lot of variety within the songs, like all singing and all screaming and within one sentence a morph of the two. I think we touched upon everything that we do well in the band and did something different.

Metal Exiles: What do you think is the strongest point of the band?

Corey: We love heavy and melodic stuff and we take everything we like about music and incorporate it into our sound. Entwining the brutality and melodic stuff within the same song and making it fit together is how we want our music to sound. The harmony guitar underneath the vocals is one of our trademarks as well as a guitar melody going along with the vocals as well which is the IRON MAIDEN influence in us, not a lot of standalone guitar parts. When we did "Ascendancy", there were two guitar players in the band for the first time so everything just became natural with guitar harmonies.

Metal Exiles: Do you think trying to be overtechnical in the past lost some fans?

Corey: I think with "Shogun", over time people came to think that as our best album and the fans that we have that are musicians appreciate that record, but not all of our fans are musicians. A lot of fans say that "Ascendancy" is their favorite album and whereas there are technical parts, that album is more straight-forward; it was driven on the songs, so when you do too much, sometimes people just do not get it. Someone might think a song is amazing, whereas someone might just hear a bunch of mumbo jumbo. Writing songs that can catch people is the focus and writing great songs makes a career as it is not about showing off an soloing all over the place.

Metal Exiles: In the past you guys have been compared to different bands. Do you think with "In Waves", this record puts you out there on your own?

Corey: When we wrote this album, we wanted to put a stamp on our sound. With the previous albums, we did a lot of experimenting, trying different things, but with this album we had time to solidify who we are and what we sound like and taking the best parts of what we have done and blending it into what we did on this record, it is us. It doesn't sound like anybody doing metal these days and for all the bands we have compared to, there is nothing on this record sounds like them at all. I think we have finally nailed down what we do and learned to write songs that sound like TRIVIUM.

Metal Exiles: With all of the tours you have been given, why did Roadrunner afford you so much time to work on this record?

Corey: We wrote and demoed for a few months and we were supposed to start recording in mid-September, but the guy we wanted, Colin Richardson, was doing another record, which was having delays itself, so we did not start recording until January of the next year. The label wanted us to work with Colin on this record, so we were in no rush, and in hindsight it was good that we were delayed because we did a lot of stuff that was important for these songs and we were able to take them to the next step. If we had of recorded when we were supposed to, I think the songs would not have sounded the way it does now.

Read the entire interview from Metal Exiles.