New Trivium!

Today, Trivium released a song titled In Waves from their upcoming album, which is as of yet untitled. Here it is, in all its glory.

It definitely goes back to their roots and sounds much more like the album that put them on the map, Ascendancy. It is certainly one of the catchiest songs they have written. The heavy segments are definitely inspired by Soulfly; in fact, the heavy parts where Matt is screaming "In Waves" sounds like it comes directly from a Soulfly song. 

There are more breakdowns in this song than in albums past, which is surely due to their new drummer, Nick Augusto. This is the second song by Trivium I have heard (the other being Shattering the Skies Above) since their original drummer, Travis Smith, left the band in February 2010. I think that Nick is a much better drummer than Travis and is moving Trivium forward. That's not to say that Travis is a bad drummer, I just think his only forte was with metalcore music, and wasn't a very well-rounded drummer. 

Typically, I am against the genre-fication of metal, but unfortunately, it is the only way to describe a band's sound. This song is far more metalcore than the previous two records. Basically, this means that there is more of a shift in the song between heavy parts and cleaner parts. There are distinct rifts between extremely heavy parts and more traditional rock parts. The tempo slows, the riff isn't as crunchy, and the vocals go from screaming to clean singing.

I don't want to infer that this is what the album will sound like, however. Too many people hear one song an assume that is how the entire album will sound. For instance, Shattering the Skies Above is a song that was written with the new lineup, and sounds entirely different from this song.

All in all, I think it is an awesome song. It certainly sounds like a Trivium song. It is both a step forward and backward for them, as I feel that Trivium has been a band that has struggled to find a sound that is uniquely theirs. They took a step forward toward creating their sound by taking a step back toward their roots. It remains to be seen (er, heard) what the rest of the album will sound like, but I am very excited for its August release!