Shogun

Back-drawing contemporary genre. Appeal to the masses. Low level of musical and artistic prowess, or any inherent worth at all. Music that will inevitably sound lame after at most a decade. You know what I'm talking about; I'm talking about metalcore. Trivium's magnum opus "Shogun" (very unfortunately) belongs to this, er, "bad," genre, specifically of the "melodic metalcore" creed. With how good the underlying material is, though, one would ask, what went wrong? Why did they go that route? The answer to that would probably be "commercial concern." Metalcore was the big thing back then. Right? As much as everyone would want artists to only consider musical aptitude when elegantly crafting their work, people have families to feed. Alas, "selling out" creeps up on promising musicians, it usually doesn't happen willingly. And as for Trivium, their entire career was a big "selling out" to contemporary trends. But you can tell these guys are thrashers at heart.

Trivium's earlier material that lied under the façade of "metalcore with a thrash twist" was obscured by crummy production, lack of vision for how to accomplish in putting the two genres together, and metalcore being more dominant overall, allowing for fewer "epic" parts that make Shogun, Shogun. While this album isn't free from the aforementioned flaws either, it's a massive improvement, in contrast to their earlier works. And perhaps coincidentally, this is also the best music Trivium ever wrote to date. While most songs are plagued by cheesy, lousy parts just like their earlier work, the good parts ultimately drown out the bad ones. Conclusively, you're left with epic thrash metal delivered erroneously as metalcore; and mouth-watering virtuoso solos to top it all.

As soon as "Kirisute Gomen" kicks off after that cool acoustic intro, your expectations for the music are set very high. It's head-lopping, string-chugging, lung compressing, epic thrash metal (except for the chorus) with an amazing interlude. All the instruments are handled as they should be. The guitar work is as I've mentioned, epic, and the seven-string tones are also surprisingly chic and defined. Matt's voice is as good as ever, and his clean singing is more prevalent, not leaving much room for those, to put it mildly, "odd" rough vocals. The underlying drums and bass also do their work perfectly, though they aren't as coherent with the leading instruments as one would expect from a band that's so technically skilled.

I wish I could write "that's it, this defines the rest of the album well enough. Have a nice day, everyone!" and call it a day, and give this a 100% rating, but oh, the throes of dealing with metalcore.

The rest of the album is dissimilar to the opening track. Alas, it's mostly (excellent) metalcore with virtuoso solos and thrashy interludes that make the tracks, with a few stand-outs. The material underlying those all had the potential to be just as good as Kirisute Gomen, but Trivium settled not to make such a massive change all of a sudden and core their metal instead. "Torn Between Scylla And Charybdis" and "Throes Of Perdition" are surprisingly not all that bland, but fall flat in conveying whatever emotion or musical worth they're supposed to express. Other than those two, though, it's some fun little metalcore that you can't even tell apart from each other, and probably won't listen to again. Until the title track begins rolling, that being.

The song "Shogun," much like its companion track "Kirisute Gomen," is pure metal almost entirely devoid of that "-core" stuff, with progressive elements and enough variation between different segments that keep you engaged for 11 minutes. Just listen to it, you won't be disappointed.

My reaction to Shogun once it ended was listening to it again a couple of times. After that, a couple more. Then sadness and a bit of anger, as I noticed how much potential was essentially wasted here. Damn it, Matt.

Nowadays, Trivium are well past their prime. Looking at their recent releases, it's a good possibility they'll release a pure thrash record one day, but they should've done that with Shogun. It's so sad to see such an inherently good album fall victim to the faintness of a genre dead on the water.

Confused reader's guide to the album:
Must-listen: Kirisute Gomen, Shogun.
Good stuff: Throes Of Perdition, Torn Between Scylla And Charybdis.
Not recommended or otherwise unnotable: Tracks not yet mentioned.