Orlando, Fla.-based metallurgists Trivium will ensconce themselves in a Florida recording studio in mid-January to start cranking out the as yet untitled follow-up to 2008 album Shogun. Guitarist/vocalist Matt Heafy reports that 17 songs have been written for a new disc tentatively slated for a late-spring/early-summer 2011 release.
Jackson-wielding Trivium guitarist Corey Beaulieu had noted earlier that forthcoming new Trivium material would be deliberately conceived to not sound like the songs on Shogun.
“We’ve been concentrating more on more to-the-point, catchier songs without going off too much,” Beaulieu said in a summer 2010 radio interview. “There are no seven- or eight-minute songs on this one. There are a lot of really cool riffs and a lot of really cool parts and, obviously, there are guitar solos all over the place.”
While new songs won’t echo the sound of the 2008 album, Beaulieu was quick to emphasize that the band still sounds unmistakably like itself.
“It doesn’t sound like Shogun, but it sounds like Trivium,” he said “It’s got a different feel than Shogun—a lot more in your face and heavier and faster. It kind of balances out everything—we’ve got four or five songs that are all screaming; we’ve got a couple of songs that are all singing; and huge songs that are kind of a mix—a kind of Ascendancy (2005) vocal style, with both screaming and singing, so there’s a good variety, which makes it really interesting to listen to because each song has its own thing going on, so they all stand out really well and fit together, too. It’s got a good balance of everything, but the energy and the intensity are just a lot more up there. I guess if you compare it to anything as far as being aggressive, it’s probably more towards Ascendancy than anything else.”