Trvium played in the Ipswich Reagent Theatre on April the 24th 2007, I must have been twelve or thirteen, supported by Sanctity, Annihilator and Gojira. Of course, at the time I had no idea who these bands were, or even that Trivium had released three albums. I’d listened to the song “Dying In Your Arms” and decided it was alright, so I tagged along with Hamish and Josh (and our respective parents, of course, because we were too young to get in without guardians. How very rock-‘n’-roll.)
This was my first proper gig, aside from Busted at the O2 arena two or
three years before, and I was really nervous. I didn’t know what or whom to
expect. I’d listened to one Trivium song and now here I was, in a black
Metallica tee-shirt, walking past hordes and hordes of weathered metal veterans
with long hair, huge beards, fat bellies, with black-haired girls in
short-shorts and big boots hanging off their arms. I felt very out of place.
But of course, once inside, the spirit of the metal community shone through,
and looks, age, the fact your parents were with you, didn’t matter a thing.
Everyone was here to enjoy the gig, and enjoy it we did. Maybe a week or so
afterwards, I found myself in town with Josh, stood in the long-since closed
down HMV in the middle of Colchester. There it sat, under the black, bold “TRIVIUM”
divider. Ascendancy.
Back then, a few years since its 2004 release (When they had long hair
and no ear stretchers), for me it was the ultimate rebellion. Overly-angry
verses, long hair, spikey guitars that seemed to play a million notes a minute,
and a vocalist that screamed “fuck” a lot. So, continuing with the theme of “Blasts
From The Past” albums that have made me what I am today, I should continue
onwards, down the road of sadness and disappointment.
After the atmospheric and malignantly evil-sounding intro that is, rather
predictably and disappointingly named “The End, (Nice one guys, not been done a
thousand times before or anything…) the albums starts with the big, crushing,
powerful intro that starts “Rain”. As an early-teen, I was dazzled by Heafy and
Beaulieu’s guitar work, it was a thousand miles from Metallica! Now, five or
six years later, it sounds weak. The cliché metalcore riffs that carry “Rain”
along don’t change much, but complement Matt Heafy’s angry shouts well. So far,
it’s relatively mediocre. It shifts eventually into an equally angry pre-verse,
then a chorus which is little more that Matt Heafy’s weak, wailing clean
singing over some blocky power chords; they feel childish and irrefutably poppy.
On “Rain” especially, Trivium try to use clean singing over guitar harmonies
whilst employing some super-fast drumming. Unfortunately, this sounds strained
and weak, as opposed to climatic and atmospheric, as the bass parts simply just
don’t step up. It’s a catchy start though, and relatively easy to listen to.
The trend continues to the next song, “Pull Harder On The Strings Of Your
Martyr”. It’s listenable, but nothing very special.
Unfortunately, the story doesn’t change as the album continues to slowly
progresses. Every single song is written in a near identical
verse-chorus-verse-chorus-development-solo-chorus-chorus fashion, and it becomes
very tiresome very quickly, especially when transitions from section to section
are weak or non-existent. Sometimes it feels as though the band have simply had
two ideas and decided to jam them next to each other, even if they don’t work,
such is the case on “Drowned And Torn Asunder”, “Like Light To The Flies” and “Departure”.
As the album moves from its first, relatively good songs, riffs become samey
and recycled, as does song structure, falling into the trap of simply using the
same couple of techniques to structure every single chorus and verse.
Solos are a redeeming feature and stick out from the rest of the
mediocrity that the album is rife with. Often well-harmonised and carefully planned, albeit too frequent and
obviously placed, Beaulieu and Heafy often dual back and forth clever leads
that tend to work well with the song. There are points also, when Trivium’s
predictable chorus mixes of clean vocals and chunky chords do work very well,
such as on “suffocating Sight.”
Then “The Deceived” kicks in, just at the point when many listeners
will be tired of the samey songs. This track sits quite proudly in the “All-Time
Favourites”. This is the one track where, in my humble opinion, Trivium just
mange to do everything right: Matt finds his natural range and sorts out his
harmonies, they realise that they’re overusing their normal guitar techniques
and that their drummer can play damn fast and work well with simpler riffs, and
that solos don’t have to be radically fast to be good. Though still in a relatively
predictable structure, it’s easier to forgive them as riffs begin to fit with
vocals and lose the annoying, pointless and painful sweep-picked trills in the
lower guitar octaves that ruin songs such as “Ascendancy”. As a result, though
perhaps a little simpler, the song work a hell of a lot better, as Trivium aren’t
fighting to cram as much as they possibly can into five or so minutes. But the
high from “The Deceived” doesn’t last long, and the final three songs on the
album may as well have been the same.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s very little actually wrong with Ascendancy, there’s just so much wasted
potential. As you listen to the songs, it’s impossible to stop thinking “what
if you’d just done this” or “what if you’d left that out”. On the whole, Ascendancy is terribly mediocre and
heralds the more processed, popularised metalcore/weak thrash Trivium have
released in recent years; but it isn’t without its good points: clever solos,
the occasional powerful chorus, “The Deceived”. For me though, it’s been a good
few years since I listened to this album, and it really isn’t how I remember
it.
Overall – 6.5/10
Best Song: The
Deceived – 9/10
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