TRIVIUM's PAOLO GREGOLETTO On New Drummer ALEX RÜDINGER: 'He's A Machine'

On Saturday, June 13 at the Download festival at Donington Park in Castle Donington, United Kingdom, TRIVIUM bassist Paolo Gregoletto spoke to TotalRock's "Hobo On The Radio" show about the band's upcoming album, which is tentatively due in early 2027. The LP will be TRIVIUM's first to feature new drummer Alex Rüdinger (formerly of WHITECHAPEL),who replaced Alex Bent last October. Asked when fans can expect to hear some new music, Paolo said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "The original plan was, like, it'd be cool to have a song out by this summer. And we ended up going longer, for good reasons, 'cause we kept writing as we were recording. So it was, like, 'Oh, okay, let's add this song. Let's do this.' And we're still kind of in the mix stages of things and artwork, and just the overall, like, okay. Once we get all that, then it's kind of, like, what makes the record? What do we wanna do for this or that? When you're in it and you're just making the music, you're just kind of piling up all the stuff. But then you gotta make the hard choices, and you gotta kind of collectively figure out, like, 'Okay, what fits together? What do we do with the rest?'"

Paolo continued: "We've been planning for the touring — that stuff's been coming no matter what — but where it fits in with the touring and the release, we'll kind of see. I'm thinking — it kind of feels like maybe earlier next year, but I don't know. It could kind of be sooner, it could be a little later. It just kind of really depends on when we turn everything in, and then it's, like, how long will it take to get stuff made? It's kind of something, like, in hindsight I kind of wish when we did [2021's] 'In The Court Of The Dragon', we were pretty much in that time period where vinyl was taking almost a year. And I think it was even for [2020's] 'What The Dead Men Say' as well, 'cause right when we dropped that record, everything shut down, and we ended up releasing a bunch of stuff, but without the physical products. And it kind of sucks in hindsight, 'cause you're, like, 'Ah, man, I wish we would've been able to do this and that and that' back then. But now, with the EP, we were able to do some of that. But for this new record, we're definitely gonna do a lot of cool things that we're already planning."

Asked what Rüdinger has added to the band's sound, both in a live situation and in the studio, Paolo said: "He's a phenomenal drummer. He's a machine. And I will say the one thing that he brings is, like, his level of perfectionism with learning material and really... I mean, he really breaks it all down, and he plays it like the albums. And I can't wait for people to hear his TRIVIUM stuff, what he's written, 'cause I think he's a phenomenal drummer, and the compositions, everything he does is great. But for now, you're hearing the old TRIVIUM stuff with Rudi on the drums. It's almost, in a good way, like hearing the record. It's a level of intensity with his playing, perfectionism with learning the material. And honestly, it's really made Matt [Heafy, TRIVIUM guitarist/vocalist], Corey [Beaulieu, TRIVIUM guitarist] and I's playing better, just with his tightness. And he's a great guy. And at the end of the day, the performance is the most important thing for everyone out there, but for us to get on with someone and have that same level of drive and determination, it's very important. And just kind of getting another guy in that role doing that really pushes us."

Reflecting on TRIVIUM's first jam with Rüdinger, Paolo said: "When we first had him down, it was for writing. And we were gonna be going on a tour — the tour we did last year, the last tour we did with JINJER last year, he was gonna be rehearsing the set, but we were, like, 'First and foremost, let's try to write some music.' It was kind of crazy 'cause 12 days before that, his life was completely different. He wasn't playing with TRIVIUM, a band he... Technically, we had asked him to join the band 10 years ago, which is kind of a whole other crazy story. But basically, here he is, 10 years later, the moment's arrived again, but the first thing that was the most important was, like, 'Let's write music. Let's see what happens.' And we like to write in a room together, and he hadn't really done that with any band in years. So it was, like, we have to see if there's chemistry here. And the first thing we popped out in the first day or two was pretty unreal. And it was kind of like a weight lifted off our shoulders of, like, 'Okay, things are gonna be good.' It's gonna be good, it's gonna be more than good, but before we could get into a full thing of new music, it was, like, 'Okay, we gotta do this tour first.' And then it was, like, after that first couple days of writing, shifting back into rehearsing for the tour, and I swear Rudi, he came down to our hangar. He moved in for, like, 12 days, and he played drums for 12 days straight before we went on tour. And it's very rare you find that guy away from a drum kit. He is always antsy to play. He's always thinking about it. And the only way to really physically get him away from the kit is to put him on an airplane or something."

In a separate interview with Rock Sound, Heafy stated about TRIVIUM's upcoming album: "We have Rudi now on drums, who we tried to get 10 years ago, and we couldn't get him 10 years ago. And for those 10 years, he told us that he wondered and regretted every day not being in the band. And we wondered what that was supposed to be, and now we finally have him. We're sitting on arguably our greatest album of all time. It's not out yet. We're still mixing it. So I think this is a new chapter."

Heafy also talked about TRIVIUM's final recording with Bent, the "Struck Dead" three-song EP which came out last October via longtime label Roadrunner Records. He said: "Yeah, we originally started the 'Struck Dead' EP with the intent of it being part of a full record, and as plans kept shifting, things kept changing and we found ourselves evolving and growing very quickly once again, because I feel like there's different stages of growth in life. Just like with children — they have these different brain leaps where all of a sudden they're starting to use new words, new skills, trying new things out. I feel like as a band, we're hitting that. And we felt inspired and started writing new material."

He continued: "I remember the first day that we jammed with Rudi, we flew him in to Florida and said, 'Okay, welcome. This is day one. You're gonna write new music with us.' And so from the day one where he showed up expecting to play our set for the tour coming up, he had to write new music with us, and it really blossomed from there.

"When everyone sees us live [at the 2026 Download festival] today, they'll see what's happened," Matt promised. "They'll see this growth. They'll see where only since we were… We played here [in the U.K.] last August [at the Bloodstock Open Air festival]. It's a completely different TRIVIUM now. Better than ever in every single facet of the way, and this new music is incredible. This new music, I can't wait for the world to hear it."

"Struck Dead" 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.

Speaking to Nate of The Dead Line_net, Gregoletto said about "Struck Dead":  "The EP started as we were jamming 'Ascendancy' [in preparation for the tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of that album], and we were building the studio — we were literally watching it being built as we were jamming — and then we started writing, and it's, like, 'Okay, we're just waiting for the day when we're open for business with the studio.' So we thought we'd get one song, release it during the tour. Then it became two, then it became three. And when we were done, we went out on tour and we were like, 'Oh, maybe this is the beginning of the next record.' Then when ['The Poisoned Ascendancy'] tour [with BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE] kind of ended short of what we thought it was gonna be, we decided we were gonna switch from, 'This is going to be start of the record' to 'Let this be an EP. Let this be a moment in time of the first thing we ever did at our studio we built. And we'll start fresh when we get home.' And that's basically what we've done."

Elaborating on the songwriting and recording process for "Struck Dead", Paolo said: "We finished this — what was it? Maybe January, the first week of this year, we maybe finished the actual tracking. Matt had a couple vocal things to do, and then we mixed it on the tour when we were kind of in between the U.S. and the European tour. And we went in with nothing, just kind of, like, 'Let's just jam.' And it came out heavy. I think maybe some moments are a little bit proggy, but a lot of really good hooks, good riffs. And kind of channeling 'Ascendancy''s energy, I would say. I wouldn't say it's like a carbon copy of that record at all, but a lot of energy from that record [can also be found on the new EP]."

TRIVIUM guitarist Corey Beaulieu added that the band's original intention was to make some new music available to coincide with "The Poisoned Ascendancy" tour. "We thought we were gonna be doing a whole year with the 'Ascendancy' thing, but we were, like, 'Well, it's been a long time since we put out new music,' and the whole thing with the studio, we wanted to have something ready to record," he explained. "And we knew a lot of bands now, with streaming and Spotify and all that stuff, while they tour, will just drop a song, a single and make it just all about the one song. And [we thought], 'Hey, we've never really done that in this environment.' So we were gonna be touring for 'Ascendancy', doing anniversary stuff, to have something new to put out while we're touring to kind of keep people… People have been waiting a long time for new music. [We thought], 'Hey, we'll give 'em something to satisfy 'em or hold them over for the next record.' And we had a couple of songs, and we were, like, 'We could drop 'em every couple of months or throughout the year.' And then once the touring ended [prematurely], it was, like, 'Well, how do we pivot real quick? We have to kind of figure something out pretty fast.' That's when the EP thing came about. We've never done an EP, and with the label restructuring, it'd be an easy way to kind of see the whole process of putting something new out through new people without the pressures of [releasing a full album]. So it was kind of like a fun little project to kind of try something different and new while we're chipping away at the writing a new album."