TRIVIUM's MATT HEAFY Says He Went Through A 'Midlife Crisis-Slash-Mental Breakdown' In 2024: 'Now I'm In A Better Place Than I've Ever Been'

In a recent interview with Shawn Whitney of the Missoula, Montana radio station 96.3 The Blaze, vocalist/guitarist Matthew K. Heafy of Florida metallers TRIVIUM spoke about the lyrical inspiration for the band's latest three-song EP, "Struck Dead", which came out on October 31 via TRIVIUM's longtime label Roadrunner Records. He said in part (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET):  "Last year, I had a pretty rough year. I think it was kind of like a midlife crisis-slash-mental breakdown, right in the middle of the year. As people were kind of looking around, I was doing so many things — I was scoring video games, scored a movie, I was managing bands, producing bands, [wrote a] kids' book, instructional, all this stuff. I think I did a chart — it was like 30 to 50 projects I'd finished in a year, a year and a half. I don't know why. But I think this was kind of leading up to what I was going into, and I realized that through psychiatry, cognitive behavioral therapy, I'm a person with extreme ADHD-OCD anxiety, which a lot of us have. And those triggered down into depression and things like that. So when we were preparing for the 'Ascendancy' [20th-anniversary] tour, I was looking back at the 'Ascendancy' lyrics, and I was going, 'Man, I'm still thinking that stuff about myself, about the world around me. How's that possible 19 years later?' So I decided to start doing the mental work through psychiatry, CBT therapy, all that stuff, and it was very, very difficult. And I will say that now I'm in a better place than I've ever been in my entire life. [I'm] having more fun doing what I'm doing. I feel better, I feel healthier physically, mentally, everything — everything is clear. But what's right for the [new TRIVIUM] EP, what's great for the art, was right in the middle of that is when we were doing the 'Struck Dead' EP, so all these lyrics were written basically at my mental fritzing lowest point, and I was able to channel all that into the music, thankfully. The music wasn't even enough. I had to do it through so many different outlets at the same time. And I felt like this is very important for me to talk about on stage. And I've been talking about it every single night just to encourage people, if you got this stuff going on…"

Heafy continued: "I think it's great that musicians have put more of an emphasis on mental health being important, but I think a lot of times they don't really give the solution of what you're supposed to do. And so that's why I wanna tell people, like, it's a lot of work. It's a lot of talk therapy, psychiatry, cognitive behavioral therapy, and with the CBT thing, that's like rewiring your brain's habits for something. And the best metaphor I was able to use for an anecdote was, let's say you get cut off in traffic. [You give them the] middle finger, [you're] screaming at them, [you] chase after them a little bit. That's how I used to be. And so that becomes the default reaction that you have. Same thing with jiu-jitsu. We're taught — the very first thing — how to fall correctly. No one knows how to fall correctly just out of the gate. But jiu-jitsu rewires your body so you know how to muscle-memory fall correctly every single time you fall. So CBT helps you… Okay, so I just got cut off. Now I'm, like, 'Okay, maybe they're in a rush. Maybe they're going to the hospital. Maybe they had to do something. Maybe they were late for work.' Instead of getting pissed off and then being, like, 'I'm gonna fight this guy.' So it helps it in that way. So that's just kind of a little microscopic nuance of what I was going into. But I will say that it was amazing people to make all these songs and put all that stuff in there."

TRIVIUM's "Struck Dead" tour kicked off on October 31 in Myrtle Beach and will run through December 14, with an epic hometown show in Orlando. Special guests JINJER appear, while HERIOT serves as support.

TRIVIUM performed "Bury Me With My Screams", the lead single from "Struck Dead", live for the first time at Bloodstock Open Air on August 8 after the song was officially released earlier that day.

This past October, TRIVIUM parted ways with longtime drummer Alex Bent and replaced him with Alex Rüdinger.

Rüdinger is sitting behind the kit for TRIVIUM during the band's fall 2025 North American tour. He will also be part of the writing sessions for the next TRIVIUM album.

During "The Poisoned Ascendancy" tour, TRIVIUM and BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE 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.