TRIVIUM's Upcoming 'Struck Dead' EP Is 'Heavy' And 'A Little Bit Proggy' With 'Really Good Hooks' And 'Good Riffs'

In a new interview with Nate of The Dead Line_net, TRIVIUM guitarist Corey Beaulieu and bassist Paolo Gregoletto spoke about the band's upcoming three-song EP, "Struck Dead", which will arrive on October 31 via longtime label Roadrunner. The effort 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. Paolo said:  "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 [Heafy, TRIVIUM guitarist/vocalist] 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]."

Corey added that TRIVIUM'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."

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. Prior to the show, Corey told Forever Loud about the response to the track: "[It] seems like a lot of people have been listening to it, checking it out. So hopefully there'll be a couple people in the crowd [at Bloodstock] that heard it before they showed up here.

"When we wrote it last year when we were rehearsing, we've probably been playing that song for almost a year or so," Corey revealed. "Playing it in the set, it kind of feels like an old song to us at this point, since we played it so many times up until this point. So, it'll fit right in real naturally with the rest of the songs in the set."

When "Bury Me With My Screams" was first released, Gregoletto said in a statement: "In 2023, we decided it was finally time to take the next step with the Hangar space we purchased — it was time to turn it into a full studio. We brought in designer Roger D'Arcy, thanks to an introduction from Mark Lewis, and set out on a year-long build. While construction was underway, we were deep in rehearsals for 'The Poisoned Ascendancy' tour, celebrating 'Ascendancy''s 20th anniversary. What started as an idea to release one single during the tour quickly grew into two, then three, as we kept writing while we were waiting for the build-out to be completed."

He continued: "During that time, the energy of revisiting 'Ascendancy' started bleeding into these new songs. Matt [Heafy, TRIVIUM guitarist/vocalist] poured a lot of his personal struggles from the past year into the music, and we used the writing process as a cathartic release. Those sessions evolved into a three-song EP that we're incredibly proud of, and we can't wait to debut 'Bury Me With My Screams' live at Bloodstock Open Air festival."

"Struck Dead" EP track listing:

01. Bury Me With My Screams
02. Struck Dead (Pain Is Easier To Remember)
03. Six Walls Surround Me

TRIVIUM will embark on "The Ascend Above The Ashes" trek that kicks off October 31 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and runs through December 14, with an epic hometown show in Orlando, Florida. Special guests are JINJER and HERIOT.

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.