Nu metal was dead and the corpse wasn’t even twitching. It was 2005 and the movement that had dominated music for much of the late 90s and early 2000s was laid out on the mortuary slab, stone cold to the touch, with zero chance of it suddenly rising up and gasping for air like the villain in a cheap horror movie.
Its demise was down to a mix of factors. Creative decline, over-exposure, the fact that any scene has a natural lifespan no matter how successful it once was. But there was something else happening, a wider sonic and cultural shift. Shit was getting heavy again.
2005 was the year when a new generation of metal bands seized the throne. The likes of Lamb Of God, Avenged Sevenfold, Killswitch Engage, Mastodon and Shadows Fall all offered new and individual takes on metal, albeit each built on old-school values: iron-plated riffs, solos and vocals of varying degrees of gruffness, without a seven-string guitar or scratching turntable to be heard.
It had been clear for a couple of years that the tide was starting to turn. Avenged Sevenfold’s Waking The Fallen (2003), Lamb Of God’s Ashes Of The Wake (2004) and Killswitch Engage’s The End Of Heartache (2004) had sounded a warning that a change was coming. But it would be a pair of albums by two young bands hailing from more than 4,000 miles apart, released eight months apart, that rubberstamped 2005 as the dawn of a new era for metal: Trivium’s Ascendancy and Bullet For My Valentine’s The Poison.
Geography aside, the two bands had an uncanny amount in common. Both were led by young, ambitious, ferociously driven frontmen named Matt – Trivium’s Matt Heafy and Bullet For My Valentine’s Matt Tuck. Both bands drew on a love of 80s and 90s metal, from Metallica and Slayer to Machine Head and Sepultura, dragging that sound into the new millennium. And both would experience a dizzying rise and the kind of adulation they could never have expected.
In January, Trivium and Bullet For My Valentine united for a co-headlining arena tour to mark the 20th anniversary of both Ascendancy and The Poison, each band playing the respective album in full. It’s a celebration of two classic modern metal records, but it’s also reminder of the events of 2005 – 12 seismic months that saw the rebirth of metal.
“We were all huge Metallica and Slayer fans, but we’d grown up on mid-90s metal bands like Machine Head and Sepultura,” says Matt Tuck today. “I just wanted to create something that had some of what inspired me, but with a modern twist.”
Matt Heafy, born Japan in 1986 but raised in Orlando, Florida, wasn’t even in his teens when he decided he wanted to be in a band.
“When I was 12, I watched Metallica’s [1993 live VHS] [Live Shit:] Binge & Purge – Seattle,” says the Trivium frontman. “And I told my mom, ‘I’m going to do that when I grow up.”
Matt Tuck, born six years earlier in the town of Bridgend, South Wales, had his ‘Eureka!’ moment around the same age. “I was 13 years old,” he says. “I’d grown up learning to play guitar by playing along to Metallica records. It was all in my blood.”
It was the era of Napster. Thanks to file-sharing, music was more freely available than it had ever been before, not least for kids with little money to spend on expensive CDs.
“Napster, for me, was like the tape-trading days,” says Heafy. “From Napster, I heard death metal for the first time through Cannibal Corpse, I heard black metal for the first time through Cradle Of Filth, I discovered metalcore through the German metalcore scene. Then someone sent me Jotun by In Flames [from 1997’s Whoracle album]. When I heard that I was like, ‘Wow, this is something special!’ Those things really started to spark together and influence where we were. So, I started making this music that I felt was missing from the world.”
Both quickly found their way into bands. Matt Heafy joined the nascent Trivium as guitarist shortly after watching that Metallica video, despite still being a precocious 12 years old. Matt Tuck passed through a handful of school bands before forming Jeff Killed John in 1997. For both bands, several years of hard, often fruitless graft followed.
Jeff Killed John released a string of EPs and singles, but no one wanted a British band influenced by nu metal. In 2003, they decided to change their name to the less cheesy Bullet For My Valentine, and their sound to something heavier and more-in-your-face in the hope of attracting some much-needed attention.
“All of us sacrificed so much – jobs, education, relationships…” says Matt Tuck. “We got ourselves in debt, the whole nine yards. At the time, being 22, 23 years old, we were putting ourselves in a position that was making our lives worse.”
Across the Atlantic, Trivium were finding it equally tough. Heafy was just 17 when Trivium released their debut album, 2003’s Ember To Inferno, via German label Lifeforce. Getting people to take them seriously was not easy.
“We were too metal for the hardcore kids and too hardcore for the metal kids,” he says. “We really lived on this island by ourselves. We’d sell, like, one t-shirt a night. People weren’t really clicking with it yet. This pressure was building up. We were butting heads with other bands, butting heads internally as a band. We were just full of piss and vinegar, angry at the world and ourselves.”
But any discontent and frustration was outweighed by a sheer determination to succeed – something that would be perceived as arrogance when Trivium and Bullet For My Valentine began to take off.
“People characterised both of our bands as being arrogant and cocky,” says Tuck. “But it was like, ‘No, we’re just confident young men who believe in what we do. If people don’t like what we’re saying, that’s on them. We’re just backing ourselves.’”
Arrogance or not, there was an element of putting up a front. Matt Heafy points out that some of Ascendancy’s lyrical content gives an insight into his mindset at the time, not least Departure, whose refrain (‘Run away from all the pain of life’) was the work of a teenager who was processing anxiety and even suicidal thoughts.
“It was how I felt about myself,” he says. “Those lyrics still show the things that go on inside my mind, the things I am still plagued by, the issues I still suffer from. I was suffering massively from crippling anxiety – social anxiety disorder.”
There was one bright spot during the lean years. Both men say they were aware that heavier music was slowly creeping back into the spotlight. As Matt Tuck puts it: “Nu metal was starting to fuck off and there were bands coming through that were a bit more technical.”
One of the most important bands in this cultural shift were Killswitch Engage. The Massachusetts metalcore crew had released two genre classics in 2002’s Alive Or Just Breathing and 2004’s The End Of Heartache (the Australian office of their label, Roadrunner, had even filmed a mockfuneral for nu metal as promo for the former album, complete with mourners and theatrically OTT vicar). Both frontmen acknowledge Killswitch’s importance in the sea change that was happening.
“One of the bands who really kickstarted it for us was Killswitch Engage,” nods Tuck. “Hearing them made us feel like we were on the right track. Alive Or Just Breathing came out and when I first heard it, I was like, ‘Holy fuck! That’s what we want!’ We didn’t want to be Killswitch, but there were a lot of DNA similarities.”
The perseverance began to pay off. Both Trivium and BFMV were being courted by Roadrunner, the most powerful metal label of the previous 10 years. When Trivium were offered a deal by Monte Conner – the visionary A&R man who signed Machine Head and Slipknot – they jumped at the chance.
“We were like, ‘Oh my God, it’s Monte, the guy that signed Slipknot! This is insane!’” remembers Heafy.
Bullet could have joined them. “Roadrunner, on paper, seemed like the most perfect place for us to be. But for some reason, I didn’t want to! I was like, ‘Yeah, but why be a small fish in this pond of bigger fish?’”
Instead, they signed to hotshot UK label Visible Noise, a metal-centred subsidiary of Sony. “I figured we should go in with the major label,” says the BFMV frontman. “There was no financial incentive. These guys [at Visible Noise] just really believed in us.”
Both bands entered the studio in late 2004 to begin recording. Trivium reunited with young producer Jason Suecof, who had worked on their debut. “We recorded and finished the entire record in drop D flat tuning,” says Heafy. “I remember coming to the studio and Jason just had his head in his hands and he was like, ‘Oh no, no, no!’ The whole record was slightly out of tune because that guitar wasn’t holding its pitch. So, we actually deleted everything, tuned the guitar up half a step, and redid the whole album again.”
For Bullet, making The Poison was no less tumultuous. They began work with Rage Against The Machine/Mudvayne producer GGGarth Richardson. “It soon became clear that what we wanted to achieve didn’t align with what GGGarth was doing,” says Matt Tuck. “It was a great honour to work with him because of who he is and what he’s done, but it didn’t work for us. We were on such a roll creatively, but then we’d been taken out of that to work with someone we’d never even met who then deconstructed the songs from what we wanted them to be.”
The recordings were scrapped and the band headed back to the UK to record with Machine Head and Napalm Death producer Colin Richardson, who had worked on Bullet’s debut EP. This time, the results were more satisfactory. “He was the bollocks – still is,” says Tuck of Richardson.
While neither album had gone as smoothly as their creators wanted, they were finally in the bag. Now Ascendancy and The Poison were ready to be unleashed on a world that was primed for them.
Ascendancy dropped first. Released on March 15, 2005, it peaked at a modest No.79 on the UK album charts, but its brilliance was evident from the start. Channelling modern metalcore, classic thrash and moments of euphoric melody, the stirring epic Pull Harder On The Strings Of Your Martyr and the almost power ballad Dying In Your Arms became instant classics.
“I’d got a copy of Ascendancy before it came out and we loved it,” recalls Tuck. “It was fucking wild, for a bunch of kids to write that? Mad respect. I think I did a photoshoot with a Trivium t-shirt on, too. I like to think I played my part in sharing the word!”
Critics and fans alike were of the same mind. The last album to be greeted with such blanket acclaim was Slipknot’s debut album six years earlier, and Trivium themselves were compared to the young Metallica. As is often the case, the UK was quicker to embrace these young hotshots than America. Their very first UK gig, at Wolverhampton’s Wulfrun Hall on May 1, 2005, was as part of the Roadrage Tour, sharing a bill with fellow Roadrunner bands Still Remains and 3 Inches Of Blood.
Heafy remembers sitting in the dressing room, listening to the crowd chanting their name despite the fact they were the opening band. “That’s the place [where it kicked off],” he says.
Even that couldn’t compare to Download. Just over a month after they made their live UK debut, Trivium opened up the festival’s Main Stage on the second day. Their appearance has gone down in history as one of the all-time great festival sets, sparking circle-pits and mass moshing. Matt Heafy, clad in a black shirt with cut-off sleeves, was just 19 years old, but he carried himself like he owned the world. It was a career-making performance – one that tens of thousands of people were willing them make.
“The theme of the Ascendancy years in the UK can be distilled down to that Download day,” says Heafy with a grin. “But it was such a blur and such an adrenaline dump that I just blacked out. Went to survival mode as I played.”
The sense that this was a genuine moment was underlined by the fact that Bullet For My Valentine also played Download the same day, albeit higher up the bill on the Second Stage. Their paths had already crossed a couple of weeks earlier at the Rock Im Park festival in Germany while both bands were watching Killswitch Engage.
“Matt introduced himself,” says Tuck. “The first thing he said was, ‘Thanks for your kind words in the press’, because I’d done some interviews talking about how much I loved their album.”
The feeling was mutual. The Trivium frontman had heard Bullet’s self-titled 2004 debut EP, even writing a review of it for a magazine. “I thought it was really cool,” he says now. “As soon as The Poison came out, I was a big fan of it.”
Bullet For My Valentine’s debut album was released on October 3, 2005. A sleek, streamlined modern take on thrash and groove metal augmented by some epically melodic choruses, it peaked at No.21 in the UK album charts (like Ascendancy, it would eventually reach Gold status in the UK, selling more than 100,000 copies). Four massive singles followed: 4 Words (To Choke Upon), Suffocating Under Words Of Sorrow (What Can I Do), All These Things I Hate (Revolve Around Me) and Bullet’s signature song, the soaring Tears Don’t Fall.
“This is going to sound cocky here, but I knew the album was going to be massive,” says Matt Tuck. “I knew it was going to fucking kick off. I believed what we were doing was better than anyone else and it was more unique than anyone else. I believed in it, in me and in the band. Belief made this happen.”
It wasn’t just Trivium and Bullet For My Valentine’s self-belief that helped turn them into the year’s two big breakout bands. There was a wider belief in this new, heavier strain of metal that turned it into the sound of 2005. As well as Ascendancy and The Poison, those 12 months produced a cavalcade of albums that would act as a giant reset for the scene itself: Avenged Sevenfold’s City Of Evil, Children Of Bodom’s Are You Dead Yet?, Opeth’s Ghost Reveries, Gojira’s From Mars To Sirius, The Black Dahlia Murder’s Miasma, Strapping Young Lad’s Alien, Arch Enemy’s Doomsday Machine… Each of them was different, but they all had the same aim: bringing the heavy back.
“As metalheads in our early 20s, that’s exactly what we wanted to hear, as it was technical, fucking aggressive but also super-melodic too,” says Tuck of this vibe shift. “It was super-inspiring to see other bands breaking through and achieving things with a similar sound to what we wanted. We loved seeing new bands being put on magazine covers and given big pieces in magazines like Metal Hammer.”
Both bands played the Metal Hammer Golden God awards in 2005, and hit the road hard. Bullet played dates in Europe, the States and Japan, before going on to support Guns N’ Roses and Metallica the following year. Trivium played an incredible 205 dates in 2005 alone, and were added to that year’s Ozzfest, playing the second stage alongside Soilwork, The Haunted, The Black Dahlia Murder, Rob Zombie, Killswitch Engage and Bury Your Dead.
“It was fucking crazy – sometimes festivals just nail that moment in time,” Heafy says. “We had to pay $30,000 to have that 9am slot, by the way. And get bullied by the Ozzfest people after defending Iron Maiden,” he adds, referring to the infamous bust-up between the British band and festival organiser Sharon Osbourne.
Inevitably, both Trivium and Bullet faced a backlash. They were seen as cocky upstarts who hadn’t paid their dues – not least by some of their more envious contemporaries.
“Bands would laugh at us because of the way we looked,” says Matt Heafy. “We were doing well in the UK, then we’d go back to the US and not do so well, and they’d take the piss out of us.”
Fans could be no less dismissive. “We played San Francisco supporting Children Of Bodom and Amon Amarth, and we were spat on and booed at the entire time,” he says. “So we would have to go into everything fighting.”
Bullet For My Valentine had the same experiences, but Matt Tuck believes it toughened both bands up. “We were both so ambitious, fearless and unstoppable in our attitudes to making the bands what we wanted them to become,” he says. “We got shit in the press, we got bullied by some of our peers, but we’ve had the same trajectory. I understand exactly who they are, and I think they feel the same.”
![Trivium - Pull Harder On The Strings Of Your Martyr [OFFICIAL VIDEO] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/d0dD59FYxJ4/maxresdefault.jpg)
Those experiences were tough at the time, but they don’t define that period for either musician. Instead, it’s the sense of being in the vanguard of a movement that redefined what metal could be, and set up both Trivium and BFMV for stellar careers that continue to this day.
“Nothing ever comes close to The Poison era of my life,” says Matt Tuck. “Regardless of what milestones we continue to achieve, nothing comes close to [the period] 2004 to 2006.”
“For Tuck and I, these records in 2005 changed our lives,” says Matt Heafy. “But we were only able to really see the impact 10, 15, 20 years after. A lot of the coolest metal bands that I love these days, I’ll talk to them and they’ll say, ‘Trivium was my first live band I ever saw.’ Or they’ll say Ascendancy or The Poison was their first record. That’s so cool.”
The upcoming tour is a chance for the bands to celebrate not just the albums they made, but the period that made them. Remarkably, it’s the first time Trivium and Bullet For My Valentine have toured together, and it’s a dream union for people who were there at the time, as well as those who were too young to experience that era of metal.
“It almost feels like a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” says Matt Heafy with a smile, of the Poisoned Ascendancy Tour. “A five-year or 10-year anniversary, that’s cool. But we knew we wanted to really hold on to this: ‘We’ve never done anything like it, so let’s wait for 20 years.’ It’s something special for sure.”
He’s right. 2005 was a landmark year by any measure: the point where a genre rediscovered its heavy identity once more, arguably safeguarding its future as a scene. Twenty years on, who wouldn’t want to celebrate that?
Trivium headline Bloodstock Festival in August and Bullet For My Valentine will play Download in June.
