The Crusade

Trivium is an awesome band and I recommend them without hesitation...except for two minor problems.

1. They steal practically every song they write. Don't believe me? Grab their Ascendancy album and listen to "Pull Harder on the Strings of your Martyr". That's right, they stole Carcass's "Corporal Jigsaw Quandary", sprinkled in some melodic choruses and bad breakdowns, and claimed writing credit! Listen to the opening riff of "Unrepentant". It sounds exactly like the main riff of Metallica's "Through the Never". Are there any Petrucci fans in the house? Listen to the closing instrumental and tell me it doesn't VERY familiar. Sometimes whole song structures are ripped off (for example, "Becoming the Dragon" is just a sped up version of Metallica's "For Whom the Bell Tolls"). And let's not forget the star atrocity. "Anthem (We are the Fire)" is basically a heavy metal cover of Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger." You're probably thinking I'm making that up, and I wish I was. Listen to the two songs and you'll notice obvious similarities. The chucklefucks in Trivium stole the Rocky III theme song. AAAARRRRGH!!!

There's so much "borrowed" material on this album it boggles the mind. Just on one playthrough riffs and chords seem to jump out at you, making you think "haven't I heard that before somewhere? Like...on Metallica's early CDs?" I understand lots of metal bands steal from each other. Hell, Metallica themselves aren't exactly innocent of it. But when your whole CD is a five finger discount, well, that's just lame. I really wonder why more Trivium fans haven't tipped to this yet (on second thought, I don't. The average Trivium fan was listening to Slipknot and Disturbed 2 years ago and can be forgiven for a less than comprehensive knowledge of metal.)

2. The metalcore influence. It's true the band has abandoned most of their metalcore stylings in favor of a more up-front thrash style, but there's still a lot of metalcore on this album. Unlike most metalheads I don't think metalcore is a total loss (Isle of Man and Mendeed were/are good bands and come with my recommendation) but the demarcation of good metalcore exists far north of Trivium. For starters, we have lots of annoying breakdowns all over the place. Second, several of the songs (notably "The Rising" and "Unrepentant") have ill-advised melodic choruses that sound laughably out of place. It's interesting that the band can't seem to pull themselves away from metalcore even though they have publicly denounced the genre and said that they never had anything to do with it, and doubly interesting since early interviews exist where Matt Heafy professes his love of metalcore and "the scene". Oh well, no-one could ever accuse this band of having integrity...

If you're capable of getting over those two speedbumps, you'll find The Crusade to be a decent and mostly entertaining listen. Once this band starts writing their own songs and playing actual thrash, I can see them going places. The songs are really technical and complex and full of dueling guitar solos and rapidly-changing riffs. The band are undeniably talented musicians. In fact, I'm willing to call Corey Bealeau a better guitarist than Kirk Hammett. At least he knows how to solo without a wah-wah pedal.

People love to bash Heafy's voice and I will admit these criticisms are valid. He sounds quite syrupy and auto-tuned, and not at all like the rugged James Hetfield voice he's obviously shooting for. But I give the guy kudos because he's making an effort to put on a thrash performance this time rather than his previous metalcore screams.

There are no fast songs in the sense of Metallica's "Battery", and this gives the album a rather uniform listen, but it still pulls together as a cohesive whole. "Entrance to the Conflagration" has choral backing vocals that give it a nice atmosphere, as well as a good chorus and solo. "Tread the Floods" is also certified headbanger material. I'm not really fond of the slower songs but they're still well-written and sufficiently moody. The album's best moment is in the closing instrumental. Despite the material stolen from Petrucci it's still a very tight and entertaining 8 minutes that meshes prog metal sensibilities with the band's own metalcore/thrash style, and is proof that this band does in fact hold promise.

There's a great band deep down inside Trivium, somewhere hiding. They have the technical ability, they obviously demonstrate the correct influences (perhaps TOO MANY of the correct influences, if you catch my drift), but they refuse to capitalize upon their abilities. It's like they're taunting the metal world. How can a band perform such blatant thievery and yet still write something as brilliant as the aforementioned instrumental? Is it a joke? No. It is real.

I'm kind of undecided about this. I'm sure Trivium will eventually release something I'll enjoy, but they're not there yet. Besides, anyone who releases a butchered metalcore version of "Eye of the Tiger" and claims they wrote it is just plain evil, dude.