Trivium

Tue 12th Aug, 2008 in Features

Bass guitarist (and FL interviewee) Paolo Gregoletto joined Trivium back when most of Ascendancy was written, and the band has since changed its modus operandi. Back then members of the band would bring in riffs to be jammed out; and in The Crusade all of the material was written on tour. The band now writes parts individually – and it is these parts that are them jammed and rehearsed together. It has worked out to be the best of both worlds for the band, and as Gregoletto states, “we’ve definitely found the best way to write songs for Trivium.”

Unlike some bands that over-write for their releases, Trivium doesn’t have this type of creative overflow. While they write and record a lot of guitar demos, very little is ever – œwasted’.

“Initially we demoed twenty songs, but actually had closer to thirty, thirty-five maybe. [Label] Roadrunner doesn’t mind; because you never know, one song might have a riff that’s killer. It’s always good to have surplus of extra music because down the road you might take it and turn it into something else.”

The band has an enormous fan-base, which keeps them constantly on their toes. They have done multitudes of shows all over the world, so I had to ask which the best and worst shows have been for them. For Gregoletto, the best show he’s played with Trivium happened in Australia.

“Probably the best show was in Australia – it’s a good way to pinpoint just one of the best. The first show we did in Australia was in the Gold Coast at the Big Day Out. It was our first show ever in Australia and thousands of kids were chanting our names. It was an awesome moment; we knew then that we had a pretty big impact on thousands of kids miles from our home. It was an incredible moment. We hit the stage and it just went off.”

In comparison, the worst show was one where the punters didn’t even know who the band was. “Most of the worst ones were back before Ascendancy came out. One was in, like, January 2005. We were doing a tour and were the first of four bands opening for Dillinger Escape Plan. It was a cool, short run goin’ up into Canada. Nobody knew who the hell we were.

“It was an odd tour,” Gregoletto muses. “We didn’t really fit the bill. But Dillinger are cool dudes; they’re a great band, and they treated us well. But we just weren’t connecting with the crowd for the week. No one would get on the main part of the floor. There was a gigantic, rectangular gap in the middle. It was a very, very odd feeling. We’ve never had that since then, but I think it was just that no one knew who we were.”

Gregoletto goes on to say that an experience like that is one that you just have to take in your stride and keep going. If you let it affect you, then you may as well not write metal. “We just made our shows more intense. Sometimes you’ve gotta fight for it.”

The band’s new record Shogun is being released in September this year. Not having heard the album, I query what fans can look forward to. Gregoletto assures me that this next album captures the best of everything they’ve done right on the last three, and that some of the change has come about with the move to another producer.

“Well, I think people are going to see the gigantic leap we made from The Crusade. That came about when we were touring. The time we took to write and demo this album is another change, getting a fresh start on recording it and making changes. We’d done so much with Jase [Jason Suecof], who produced everything Trivium had ever done, but we knew it was time to make a move and move onto another producer, Nick Raskulinecz.

“We flew out and just it hit off, and knew that we were gonna get the energy that we wanted. We wanted to capture the energy that a Trivium live show has, and that was just the main thing: to find what Trivium is and capture it on an album. It wasn’t easy, but we had the time demo-ing and rehearsing it and all the hard work paid off.”

Gregoletto can reveal little about the artwork on the release, because he personally hadn’t heard much about its progress. But what he can say is that it is far more artistic than previous albums. “We got tons of art inside the booklet. There is artwork for each of the songs. It’s a very artistic booklet and it will make it to our staging and all that sort of stuff. It’s kinda hard to describe. It’s different from The Crusade and Ascendancy, which had a central figure. It doesn’t have that. – œIt’s very epic’ is probably the best way to describe it without taking twenty minutes!”

Trivium are only playing one show in Australia this week, at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre. “It’s not a normal tour,” Gregoletto explains. “We’re doing press out in Australia and thought that if we’re gonna fly thirteen hours to do press, we may as well do a show and play some of the new material. We’ll gladly do a tour, but at the moment we don’t have time. We are coming back though and are gonna do a full tour of the country.”

Before he heads off, Gregoletto thanks all of Trivium’s fans for supporting them in Australia. “Just, thank you for the support you’ve given Trivium. Every tour has been huge, and the response has been great. It took us a lot to get down there but it’s worth the wait. We’re gonna come back with every album – hopefully multiple times!”

Trivium’s new album Shogun is due out in September through Roadrunner. They play The Enmore Theatre in Sydney on Wednesday 13 August.