The Crusade : Trivium : Review : Rolling Stone

Nothing mars a good metal record like so-called harsh vocals, which is a nice way of referring to the booming, incoherent growling style so many metal groups who grew up listening to nasty stuff from Florida or Scandinavia use today. Matt Heafy, lead vocalist of the Orlando, Florida, thrash-metal quartet Trivium, fell into that trap on their first two records -- but for their new politically charged album, The Crusade, he's tossed the bark aside in favor of his actual voice. The change makes all the difference, even if he now sounds so much like his hero James Hetfield it's distracting. The rest of Trivium also sound like they've been listening to Cliff Burton-era Metallica on nonstop shuffle, but somehow they never come off as a cheap knockoff. Trivium's songs are mostly taken straight from the headlines -- though their newspaper must be late, because some of the stories are at least five years old. "Entrance of the Conflagration" is about Andrea Yates, who drowned her five children in 2001, and "Contempt Breeds Contamination" is about the 1999 killing of Amadou Diallo by the NYPD. Still, when Heafy and Co. rip into Bush and Co. for their Iraq fuck-up on biting speed-metal tracks like "Ignition" and "Detonation," they seem like one of the few contemporary metal bands that matter.

ANDY GREENE

(Posted: Sep 29, 2006)

News and Reviews

Click "Copy Me" to add the RS.com Widget to your Facebook page, blog, MySpace page and more.

How to Play This Album

Click the play button.
Register or enter your username and password.
Let the music play!

No commitment.
It's FREE.

Track List

Play All

Your Turn

Give us your review of The Crusade

Review 1 of 5

Not Rated

Heavy metal has been reduced to a boring, homogenized version of it's former self. Most of metal's modern practitioners are low standard assembly-line nobodies. You can't tell one band from another, and most of them are unconsiously ripping off the older bands they're trying to distance themselves from. Heavy metal is old, people, so everybody new is going to sound like somebody old whether you like it or not. On 'The Crusade', Trivium embraces their influences, and thus have changed themselves into an anamoly in today's metal landscape; a band that is immediately recognizable, descernable from the pack of amateurish headbangers they quickly left for dead when vocalist Matt Heafy began doing something strange. The man actually sings... go figure. He's no Sinatra, but the style of inaudible growling employed by modern metal 'vocalists' has had the opposite effect of what it was intended for... it's made the music soft. Heafy underscores, and never overshadows, the power of his bandmates' playing by delivering a fluid, workmanlike vocal style that inspires all extremes from rage to calmness, heat to ice and insanity to cerebralness. The cartoonish 'growlers' have no such range of emotion, thus they can never be considered heavy, only heavy-handed.

Oct 30, 2007 18:49:50

Review 2 of 5

5of 5 Stars

The Metallica comparison seems so wrong to me.

If you have to compare this amazing band to a group from the 80's, Trivium is much more akin to Megadeth. Both have amazing, politically aware lyrics. Both have two wonderful lead guitar players.

I haven't stopped listening to The Crusade in months. It's the best new album I've heard (other than maybe Shadows Fall's War Within) in 15 years.

Jan 5, 2007 15:59:39

Review 3 of 5

3of 5 Stars

"The Crusade" is a good solid album IF you like old school metal. While I can sit and listen to a select few songs off of the album, I can't stand too much of it for long period's of time. I am a very big fan of the "ascendancy style" trivium. while the following statements may contredict each other, it is just how i feel: "The Crusade" is a decent album, but i also see it as the #1 letdown in metal of the year. I expected so much more out of Trivium. BRING BACK THE SCREAM HEAFY!

Oct 19, 2006 09:19:59

Review 4 of 5

1of 5 Stars

Ok pretty much this album is a Metalica RIP OFF. I am so dissapointed in Trivium. One question i have is why did they go oldschool? But if you like Metalica you'll like this cd.

Oct 10, 2006 14:12:10

Review 5 of 5

2of 5 Stars

Hes got a good voice... but hes trying to hard... first 3 tracks sound all the same... nothing special about them! by track 3 it felt like the album had been going on hours! boring if you ask me... anthem a good track... carried on listening to the album and out of the amount of songs there are only around 3 songs have got a special something, doesnt even come close to the last album! they said in an interview! "our new album will blow you away" it did! in the most worst possible way! were one of my favourite "NEW" bands now they just fading in with the rest of the modern day music! SHIT!

Oct 10, 2006 01:40:34

Previous Next