HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: Ember To Inferno – Trivium

It’s hard to think of a time when TRIVIUM weren’t one of metal’s finest bands; but back in 2003, not many outside of their local scene really knew who they were. With a smattering of demos here and there, they did eventually get noticed by German label Lifeforce Records to release their debut album. Now, twenty years on, Ember To Inferno is regarded as a raw blueprint of the globe-bothering phenomenon TRIVIUM went on to be. To get an intimate, on-the-ground view of not only its creation but legacy, we sit down with the now-legendary Matthew K Heafy to talk all things Ember To Inferno. 

“I always feel like it’s very ahead of its time,” is his honest answer when asked how he feels about the album now. “It was a good indicator of where we would go… A lot of times a band’s first record is when they’re really trying to find themselves, but I feel like we came right out the gate having found it.” That confidence isn’t unfounded; in fact, as he points out, you can draw almost straight lines between this 2003 release and 2021’s In The Court Of The Dragon, which is “basically an Ember song but on seven strings.” 

In fact, realistically, the main things separating Ember To Inferno from their modern output is a crisper, clearer production and their growth as musicians. Otherwise, all the hallmarks that they shook the world with on Ascendancy (2005), even through to the oft-maligned Silence In The Snow (2015) can be heard right on this debut album. Although, trying to get your hands on the album to hear that at the time proved tricky. “When release day was coming up, we were so excited,” he remembers, “we went to our local store to buy it, and it wasn’t there!”

So how do you create an album that turns out to be the blueprint of practically everything that you develop on later albums? “Really fast,” he grins, recalling the recording process for the album. “We recorded the entire thing in about ten or twelve days.” True to now, they practised as much as they could before entering the studio; “it’s not that we were trying to hurry through it. Obviously we didn’t really have a budget, but we did practice so damn much, even back then.” 

Since its creation, Ember To Inferno has been reissued a few times, most recently in 2016, when the band collected it together with a series of demos; two recorded before, and one recorded after Ember, in order to, as he puts it, “bring people up to speed with where we were right before Ascendancy”. While none of the songs on Ruber (also known as the Red demo) made it onto future records, some of those songs on Caeruleus (the Blue demo) were re-recorded for Ember, but “I kind of prefer them on the blue demo,” he admits, “because that’s when we had a click track and the tempos were a little more chilled out.” 

If that sounds nit-picky, it is. Heafy happily expresses his love for Ember To Inferno, and that his only real qualms with the album are that they didn’t record to a click track “because the tempos fluctuate massively,” but that there’s also something special there too, given it’s the only TRIVIUM record not done to a click. In fact, he wouldn’t change a thing about it, even twenty years on. “I’m sure that’ll be one of the questions,” he pre-empts, “and the answer’s no.” True to his answer, none of Ember’s reissues have been remastered, even if they did once consider it. 

“I wanted to preserve it,” he admits, “the only record we ever said we wanted to remaster was Vengeance Falls (2013), and we did it.” While that remaster has now been released, there’s no such plans for Ember, and never were. “I’ve always loved the mix. It’s a little quiet, but I think that’s what’s cool about it. We had it mixed at Audio Hammer, a legendary death metal studio in Florida, so I just didn’t want to change it, to mess it up. It’s a time capsule, it’s the earliest moments of TRIVIUM. If we remastered or remixed it, it wouldn’t preserve what it was.”

To this day, not only does Heafy love the album, but the band pays tribute to it every night on tour (though they’re off for a well-deserved break now). “I feel like albums one through seven all sound incredibly different,” he admits of their penchant for changing their entire sound between records, “but I feel like Crisis Of Revelation is just as exciting as Like Light To The Flies, and In The Court Of The Dragon is probably closest to an Ember song.” That there’s such a clear identity throughout their career, despite the sonic shifts, is nothing short of remarkable.

TRIVIUM have truly grown into the album’s name, with it heralding a sound they would refine, then expand upon numerous times; from its embers to the inferno they are today. But they nearly did it with a different name. “I don’t know if I ever mention this, but there was a moment where I said we should change our name to When Forever Comes Crashing, because it was the name of a CONVERGE EP,” who he had professed a love of during the time of making it. “It was shot down,” he grins.

Ember To Inferno was originally released on October 14th, 2003 via Lifeforce Records.

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