Mind Equals Blown

My Journey With Trivium

When I’d first heard of the band Trivium, I was browsing through my best friend’s Comcast music videos on demand. Back then, I only had a vague sense of music. I had only just gotten into the metal scene, with my very first concert being Disturbed, Chevelle and Taproot a few years prior. I was mostly into the Nu-Metal scene and didn’t venture too far outside of that. I saw the selection for Trivium’s music video for the song “Pull Harder On The Strings Of Your Martyr” not really knowing what to expect. I only knew of them at this point by some of my friends from high school who wore shirts of theirs. As soon as I heard that song, I was instantly hooked. My friend Jay was also instantly hooked. But I never could just go to the store and buy CDs since it was so far away and my parents didn’t ever have time to take me.

I tagged along with my brother to Guitar Center off of Arden Blvd where, among the numerous flyers of local bands opening for sub-par famous bands, I picked up a free DVD full of music videos, which I still have to this day and was also my very first experience of the bands Coheed & Cambria and Crossfade. There were also videos for Korn, Mudvayne, Cake, Butch Walker, and of course Trivium. The music video in this DVD was for the song “A Gunshot To The Head Of Trepidation.” This brought on a need to buy the album, however it was still out of my reach. I had failed algebra one that year, and in summer school I met a kid who shared the same love that I had for everything Roadrunner Records (Trivium’s label). I happened to have the Killswitch Engage album The End Of Heartache and he wanted to trade his copy of Ascendancy for it, which I happily accepted.

That album rarely left my CD player through my three years of riding the bus to and from school every day. Trivium was the one band that always stuck with me, no matter what phase I happened to be going through at the time. Whether it was hip-hop, death metal or punk, I could always turn on Trivium at any given moment and play it through four times in a row.

Right before a friend of mine moved to San Francisco (who I had a mad crush on at the time), we went to the mall. I bought The Crusade the very day it came out and she bought Bullet For My Valentine’s The Poison (which she ended up giving to me right before she left). I noticed how much different that The Crusade was in comparison to Ascendancy, but I still fell in love with it all the same. The change to melodic thrash metal from metalcore was drastic, but the singing was such a welcome change for me. “Entrance of the Conflagration,” “Unrepentant,” and “Tread The Floods” were my personal favorites off of the album, though there’s not one song that I don’t like. I really took notice of the lyrics here, as most of them were based off of famous murders, such as Andrea Yates, Nazir Ahmed, and Matthew Shepard. Since I have a knack for studying that sort of thing, it only made the album stick to me even more.

When I first heard the new single “Kirisute Gomen,” which I downloaded from Roadrunner Records’ website, I was ecstatic. Finally hearing Shogun in its entirety, I loved how it was a perfect blend of the “old” Trivium (metalcore) and the “new” Trivium (melodic thrash metal). The songs mixed up quite nicely and I feel it was the album that truly established Trivium as legends of our time. I finally got to see them for the first time while they were touring for this album (as I had missed them when they played the Family Values tour) and it was better than I ever expected. While they were touring, Hatebreed also had a separate tour going on, so for only two days both tours combined into one awesome show. There is no difference to me at all when it comes to them playing live or recording, and that’s something only a very small handful of bands can truly pull off. I had to punch someone in the grill for a guitar pick that Matt Heafy threw into the crowd (which I later got signed by Matt and Paolo Gregoletto), but it was worth it and is now displayed in a shadow box as one of my most prized possessions. You cannot imagine the joy I had meeting Trivium after years of listening and supporting them. Not only that, they were also the very first band I’ve ever interviewed face to face.

To me, Trivium will probably stand as not only my all-time favorite band, but also as one of the very few bands that truly got me up and wanting to work in the music industry, which I had started by working for the Roadrunner Records Road Crew. Ever since then I have moved up in the music business world and it has become my ultimate dream to be either a music journalist for Revolver or Rolling Stone, or to own a successful record label.

Author: Ridge Briel View Staff Page for Ridge Briel

My name is Ridge, not Cliff. I love music, not tied to any particular genre, except for jazz, no gusta. I also write for metal-army.com, Substream Music Press, and fridayreviews.blogspot.com. I feed orangutans peach flavored ice cream over the telephone. I'm slightly (understatement) erratic and random. I have many years spent in music history, some call me a music encyclopedia.