Sixteen years ago, in the now forgotten year of 2005, when things like Youtube were in their infancy and the analog format of receiving information was still king, I found Trivium.
And I hated them.
Well okay, hate is a strong word. I loathed the idea of them.
You see I had heard about them as much of the world had. Their (major label) debut album Ascendancy grabbed the metal world by the balls (with or without consent) and they were bestowed with the ever accursed title “The next Metallica.” I’ll never forget the sight of walking into my local Best Buy, and front and center on my left, right as you got into the music section, is the gigantic visage of the front cover of Ascendancy with like four, huge holders for rows of the CD. Right next to it, was a cutout of the band.
To almost 15 year old me, the idea of a band that looked like this being the next Metallica, my favorite band, was as maddening as it was confusing. How could this band, who looked right at home to next to the Screamo, Emo, and Metalcore bands I was seeing take over, be given such high praise? But something that never left my mind was the cover itself, it grabbed my attention. I never wanted to admit to myself at the time, but I loved it.
A year later roles around, and I find out that Kerrang is releasing a cover album of Master of Puppets, featuring newer and now-established bands. To my shock and surprise, Trivium did Master of Puppets. If I had been a betting man I would have put it on Sanitarium. I quickly acquired the release, and started the CD and went right to Trivium to see if they could do this, if they were good enough to do it.
And the rest is history.
A history that I’m retelling because I was there during Trivium’s next album, and the album that has become the holy grail to Trivium fans, Shogun.
Shogun is three things simultaneously to me:
It’s one of the greatest metal albums of all time.
It’s one of the greatest metal songs of all time.
And it is the best Trivium album of all time.
Does that give away the ending to the review? No, because all of this has a point.
THE SETLIST:
| 1. | “X” (instrumental) | 1:27 |
|---|---|---|
| 2. | “In the Court of the Dragon” | 5:09 |
| 3. | “Like a Sword Over Damocles” | 5:30 |
| 4. | “Feast of Fire” | 4:18 |
| 5. | “A Crisis of Revelation” | 5:35 |
| 6. | “The Shadow of the Abattoir” | 7:11 |
| 7. | “No Way Back Just Through” | 3:53 |
| 8. | “Fall Into Your Hands” | 7:45 |
| 9. | “From Dawn to Decadence” | 4:08 |
| 10. | “The Phalanx” | 7:15 |
| Total length: | 52:11 |
Top 3:
- The Phalanx
- In the Court of the Dragon
- Like a Sword Over Damocles / A Crisis of Revelation
Pros: You know an album is an amazing album when you feel like leaving a song off the top 3 is doing it a disservice. As a Trivium fan this was like having Christmas and your birthday on the same day, there’s so much to love and gush about this album. A Crisis of Revelation would easily be at home among the best on Ascendancy. Songs like Shadow of The Abbattoir showcase the dynamic range that singer Matt Heafy has refined over years of experimentation, while epics like The Phalanx are literal lost cuts from their Shogun days. Also, can we just take a moment to talk about the monster choruses for songs like Like A Sword Over Damocles and No Way Back But Through?
One thing that has become a reoccurring sentiment in the metal community is that for the last few years since The Sin and The Sentence is that Trivium has been “returning to form”. Due largely to incredibly divisive releases after In Waves stemming from both the lack of a stable, reliable drummer who can play their music, and the loss of lead singer Matt Heafy’s voice in the early 2010s.
Well I can safely say that their reforming is complete, and what’s come out on the other side of it is an album that can stand toe-to-toe with some of its greatest hits.
And that’s what’s so great about this album, it took what The Sin and The Sentence started and realized that full potential, which was taking all of the elements that the band had acquired over the years and honed them. It took it one step further though, by finding the aggression that had largely been missing since halcyon days I had started the review off with. There were moments where I felt like a teenager again, a very hard thing to recapture.
This is Shogun 2 in all the right ways.
You go on this journey with each track and by the end of it, perfectly by the way with The Phalanx, you wonder, even entertain the idea if it really can dethrone Shogun as the best of all time.
Cons: Ordinarily, I would put a bottom 3 here, but there’s no reason to. Each song is unique enough, and dynamic enough, and hooky enough to where every single song at the very least surprised me with a riff or sequence.
If I had to even attempt to find a flaw in this masterful album, it’s that I felt I knew exactly where each chorus was going to hit and how, but can that even be considered a con when it was well done?
VERDICT: 9.8 / 10
I was very, very conflicted on whether I could give this a perfect score or not. I think one of the things I really struggled to also do was let it be its own thing. So much of Trivium’s efforts stand in the shadow of an album they released 13 years ago. Whether that’s the fans or even the band themselves, they’re oftentimes found standing in the shadow of nostalgia, something that will only get stronger with time.
Does In The Court of The Dragon dethrone Shogun as the best? No, it doesn’t.
However, it does something almost as important, it can stand toe to toe with it. It proves that looking forward to new Trivium is as exciting as going back and listening to the old.