Trivium, What The Dead Men Say Album Review
By : Dan Grzywa
TRIVIUM PUSH THE ENVELOPE YET AGAIN WITH THEIR NINTH ALBUM, “WHAT THE DEAD MEN SAY”
Trivium just recently celebrated their 15th anniversary of their breakout record, Ascendancy. The record that let the world know they were ready to grab the torch of a whole new wave of heavy music. They went from being the hottest metal band on the planet to being scolded and highly criticized after the release of The Crusade. Since then, Trivium has been on a rigorous quest to incorporate all of their influences and create material that no one has ever heard before. Ever since their release of Shogun (2008), they have followed that quest and continued to evolve every following album. Many great bands evolve, try something different, but never produce anything close to their glory days. We have seen this with bands like Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer etc.
Trivium is a diamond in the rough band that not only puts out a record entirely different from the previous, but also better. There is no better example than 2017’s The Sin And The Sentence. The addition of drummer, Alex Bent, seemed to be the missing piece that would allow Trivium to put together elements from their entire catalogue, creating a whole new sound and redefining genres. Okay now where can they go from there? Trivium were able to pick up where they left off and take their talents even further. What makes an album great is when you can tell the band is playing what They want to hear. Trivium are such great musicians, highly intelligent, and want to take listeners to another world. It’s near impossible to not appreciate and be blown away from the elements they bring to the table on What The Dead Men Say. It has galloping riffs, melodic solos, howling vocals, and ear blistering drums. Don’t forget the intense themes of life, death, and catastrophes. What more could you want in a heavy metal album?
Right from the beginning, it starts with a very melodic instrumental intro right into the title track, “What The Dead Men Say”, with Matt Heafy screaming “GO!”.The highlights of the album are the guitar marriage between Matt Heafy and Corey Beaulieu, the added bass and vocal presence of bassist, Paolo Gregoletto, and unparalleled talent of Alex’s drumming. Matt Heafy’s vocal talents thrive on this record with sensitive melodies on “Bleed Into Me” and ferocious roars on “Catastrophist”, “The Deviant”, and “Bending the Arc To Fear”.
I was surprised by Trivium’s ability to really capture the emotional trauma of losing a loved one on the track, “Scattering the Ashes”. From start to finish this album takes you on a thrilling ride of energy and emotions. There are very few albums that have songs with elements of thrash metal, black metal, and death metal all in one song. When you think of typical songs from each of those genres it seems like it would be a huge mess if you throw it in one song. Trivium has the ability to mash dozens of genres and configure them into a whole new sound. When talking about what makes some of the most memorable albums great, many say that they didn’t know what they were hearing. They couldn’t pinpoint the style or describe it because of being so blown away by what they were hearing. I was just blown away by the record from start to finish.
