Trivium - The Crusade
Matthew Kiichi Heafy – Vocals, Guitars
Travis Smith – Drums
Corey Beaulieu – Guitars
Paolo Gregoletto - Bass
1. Ignition
2. Detonation
3. Entrance Of The Conflagration
4. Anthem (We Are The Fire)
5. Unrepentant
6. And Sadness Will Sear
7. Becoming The Dragon
8. To The Rats Listen Listen
9. This World Can't Tear Us Apart
10. Tread The Floods
11. Contempt Breeds Contamination
12. Rising
13. Crusade
If Metallica were an element on the periodic table they would be Metallicium, which would mean that Trivium might mean..trivial. When I started to play this CD, Metallica, early Metallica, instantly sprung to mind.
It is my destiney-ah
*chug chug chug*
Hear what I say-ah
*chug chug chug*
But then something odd started to happen. They went all..harmonised. How bizarre.
'Ascendancy' entered the world of “metal” back in 2005, and demanded that everybody listened to it. With an average age of 20, their technical ability was beyond question, and although the comparisons to Iron Maiden and Metallica were inevitable, they were irrelevant because actually, they are very good in their own right.
And that is where it comes to a bit of a problem. You see, “Crusade” is supposed to be the big one, it’s supposed to be the “Operation Mindcrime”, the “Master of Puppets” and instead, it turns out to be much less, it's the "Timmy Mallet Christmas Hits vol 1". Usually when I listen to an album, 3 or 4 tracks stand out for all of the right reasons. With Crusade however, I actually can’t remember any of them without the CD playing.
Don’t get me wrong, the technical ability is still there, and I can easily see why people like this band so much, but for me personally, they just aren’t memorable. So what’s gone wrong then? Well, for a start, Heafy no longer sounds similar to Hetfield, he now actually is Hetfield having some sort of “Hetfield Transplant” (I get first dibs in the trademark) operation. The drums are still driving, but they appear to be on a totally different road. There’s the double bass drum kicking away like mad and I’m thinking “Is that somebody else’s stereo playing?”.
Then there’s the guitar riffs, at moments, I swear it actually is “Through the Never” at one point, followed by an attempted vocal chorus that sounds like it’s just come form Journey or Rush (and I should know as I’m a fan of both!!). And while we’re on the vocals we’ll lead nicely on to the lyric themselves. Anthem (We Are the Fire)" is just ripe to illustrate my point.
"The music connects, unites us more
Our masses strengthened, an unstoppable horde
We're all now a family
Together let's show the world what we say."
The chorus:
"We are the fire
Resound the anthem."
Add generous helpings of "Woah" and "Yeah" wherever you feel the urge to laugh.
If you’ve never really heard Metallica stuff, you might actually like this though, and Trivium fans will like it anyway, and annoyingly, there are times you hear a guitar riff and you think “yup, that’s good”, only for them to change direction completely, and that heavy groove you were getting into…no longer.
So, a huge thank you to Wigston Library for letting me borrow this! Needless to say I shan't be granting it shelf space.
