HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: In Waves – Trivium
The water pulls back from the shore in as fast as lightning. The skies overhead are as black as coal; roiling with thunder and chaos. Gazing up, it appears; the great tide. A wall of water approaches the shore, towering over all. Its arrival is imminent, but spectators cannot help but stand, transfixed. It rolls closer and closer, before finally crashing with a force unheard, crushing all in its wake. This is not a recollection of a natural disaster. This is how it feels while listening to the two opening tracks of TRIVIUM‘s 2011 record In Waves. As the dissonant piano of Capsizing The Sea builds with dread and doom with its rolling snares and thunderous bass tones, there is a split second of silence before the words that would define TRIVIUM live sets from that moment onward escape front man Matt Heafy‘s lips.
“INNNNNNNN WAAAAAAAVVVVVEEESSSSS”
Coming off of 2008’s Shogun, TRIVIUM had reached, in many people’s minds, a creative peak. The record was a certified epic, with the band moving back into form after the lacklustre reception of 2007’s The Crusade into what they had established as their greatest strengths on their landmark sophomore record, Ascendancy;that is, a perfect combination of modern metalcore and the sensibility and lyricism of epic classic thrash, with instant classic riffs and melodic construction seemingly well beyond their years. Shogun was all of that, but dialled as high as it could go, with tracks like Torn Between Scylla and Charybdis and Kirisute Gomen being among the most ferocious of the band’s career. It felt like a record that truly captured the imagination and pulled listeners into epic myths expertly woven with elite guitar work and utter passion.
But for all its strengths, TRIVIUM had yet to prove they could tighten things up for a wider audience. They needed to craft a record that could show they could condense everything that made them one of metal’s brightest young talents into a condensed package; a record that was hook focused and with shorter song length, but without sacrificing the epic storytelling that is a hallmark of their sound. And after settling in with producer Colin Richardson, that’s exactly what they created. Even from the album art, it’s evident that this is band aiming for sleekness. The traditional band font is gone, and the illustrated art style that adorned previous covers is replaced by a breathtaking and mysterious image from Danny Jones. It oozes modernity and reinvention. And the songs contained within soon let fans know this wasn’t just a visual shift. Back to those famous words…
The title track immediately sets the mission statement for the record. If a new fan knew no other TRIVIUM lyrics to sing at a concert, they know the two word chorus of In Waves. It’s a both pummelling in its rhythm and elegant in its simplicity. There’s not a whole lot of frills here, just straight ahead fury and flat out the hookiest chorus in the band’s history. Across the board, the band proves that they know how to step up their game in the melody and accessibility department. Black and Built To Fall are purely clean driven radio single tracks, but they lose none of the potency expressed on the rest of the record, nor do they sound totally out of left field as The Crusade did. Even tracks like the thrashy Inception Of The End have immaculate choruses with some of the most pleasing melodies the band has ever released, even to this day. But that’s not to say they left heavy bangers out. Dusk Dismantled and Chaos Reigns take that short, punchy formula and extend it to songs of all harsh vocals, which show another vocal step up from Matt Heafy. The high scream timbre mixed with his usual throaty growl showed a new side of the vocalist which was even more brutal than anything seen before.
Not only did this record take a leap forward in showing how the band could adapt structurally and pare down their sound to great success, it also was the beginnings of the band taking risks in incorporating pure melody into their repertoire. The aforementioned Built to Fall and Black are great examples of this, but Of All These Yesterdays was to that point, one of the softest and most bold steps the band had taken in their songwriting. A soft contemplative half-ballad, the song ends the record. It’s an unexpected move but it’s a choice that shows growth and confidence in their direction.
This record would directly pull the band into exploring even more melody in their even more concise 2013 record Vengeance Falls, another maligned record that Matt Heafy fully admits in interviews was the band straying too far away from their greatest strengths. Taken one step farther, and another journey outside the lines for Heafy and co. was 2015’s Silence In The Snow, which, due to Heafy‘s vocal cord injuries and recovery, was a record of pure clean singing and the most streamlined, pop sensible songs in the band’s career. But the seeds of inspiration and the belief that the band could take chances like that were planted on In Waves, but in this case, the band had actually gotten the formula right on the very first try.
In Waves is a record that can only come from a band riding a sea of self assuredness. It not only established one of the band’s most enduring legacy tracks and a live staple that is always sure to be a festival highlight, but it also took the band to new melodic heights that they have not come down from as of yet. The choruses on this record are so strong, that the lessons learned from them have appeared on every TRIVIUM record since. It proved the band could tighten the drum and write a truly memorable three minute song that neither compromised nor sacrificed the ethos that the band had set down since the Ascendancy days.
This, more than any other Trivium record, set the band on the northstar that they still aim to capture with every subsequent record: an equal blend of pop sensible melody and raging melodeath instrumentals, with a dash of experimentation and change up to keep things interesting. To paraphrase one very metal pop culture phenomenon, “Perfectly balanced, as all TRIVIUM albums should be.”
In Waves was originally released on August 2nd 2011 via Roadrunner Records.
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