"No one else is making contemporary heavy metal on their level." Every Trivium album ranked from worst to best

Anyone even remotely paying attention to 21st century metal surely knows Trivium's story at this point. Bursting onto the scene with instant classic 2005 breakthrough album Ascendancy, the Floridian metallers were heralded as the genre's next major festival headliners in waiting, a generational performance at Download that year seemingly earmarking them for greatness. An often surprising, sometimes confusing decade followed, peppered with some killer releases but also marked by divisive stylistic shifts and bizarre creative choices, making for something of a stuttering march on metal's upper echelons.

Eventually, Trivium found the consistency fans had been crying out for, putting together a string of records that firmly consolidated them as one of modern metal's greatest bands, a maturity and sense of identity seeing them embark on a remarkable creative purple patch that has yet to dry up. With all that in mind, here are Trivium's ten studio albums ranked in reverse order of greatness.

10. Ember To Inferno (2003)

Released when frontman Matt Heafy was just 17 years old, the debut album from the then-unknown American quartet created a few sizeable ripples in the underground, but crucially piqued the interest of iconic metal label Roadrunner Records. We all know what happened next. Though its sheer youthful rawness carries an endearing charm and undoubtedly has flourishes and hints of the more sophisticated, heavyweight metal that was to come, Ember To Inferno remains Trivium's weakest effort by virtue of the unbelievable glow-up that was about to hit.

9. Silence In The Snow (2015)

If Trivium's unexpected David Draiman team-up raised eyebrows (more on that later), what came next was a genuine shock and arguably the most divisive artistic statement of the band's career. Ditching their heavier inclinations almost entirely and embracing a full-on trad metal sound, Silence In The Snow was an earnest but ultimately misguided attempt to pay homage to some of Trivium's 80s metal heroes. Channelling your inner Ronnie James Dio is all well and good, but you need the songs to back it up, and there's just too much plodding, banal heavy metal here to make an impact, the laborious title track succinctly summing it all up. Still, Silence... did give us Until The World Goes Cold, a proper, old school metal power ballad that Trivium absolutely nailed.

Trivium - Until The World Goes Cold [OFFICIAL VIDEO] - YouTube

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8. Vengeance Falls (2013)

Alarm bells rang when nu metal icon and self-proclaimed Trivium fan David Draiman was summoned to the producer’s chair for the band's sixth album. Some optimistic fans hoped the Disturbed singer’s knack for writing arena-ready choruses might take Trivium to the next level, especially in the States. Others feared it'd drag Trivium too far away from the sound they had finally mastered with their previous two records. Ultimately, neither of those scenarios fully materialised, and what we got was a mostly fine but occasionally great arena metal record, propulsive anthems like Strife and Brave This Storm doing just enough to keep the wheels turning.

Trivium - Strife [OFFICIAL VIDEO] - YouTube

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7. The Crusade (2006)

Having to follow Ascendancy, with the weight of an expectant metal world on a young Trivium's shoulders, perhaps The Crusade already had an impossible bar hanging over it by the time the quartet hit the studio. While its predecessor offered a clinical amalgamation of metallic styles, the follow-up instead separated these elements into a mixed bag of stadium rock anthems, strident thrash, ballads and histrionic guitar duels, with its diversity both its main strength and biggest pitfall. Courageous but flawed - and Heafy going Full Hetfield on some of the songs didn't help.

6. The Sin And The Sentence (2017)

Channelling the thrilling musicianship and inventive riffs of the Shogun era while, crucially, still having the confidence to persevere with the melodic strands of their previous two albums, The Sin And The Sentence was the perfect amalgamation of Trivium's journey so far and a ferocious return to form. Such was the impact of anthemic cuts like Beyond Oblivion, The Heart From Your Hate and the searing title track that they immediately switched Trivium's status from that of a band looking increasingly out of step with the times to one of the most vital and exciting metal bands in the game. Again. And they were just getting started.

Trivium - The Sin And The Sentence [OFFICIAL VIDEO] - YouTube

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5. In Waves (2011)

The band’s first full-length without founding drummer Travis Smith is a snarling, muscular beast with guitars tuned down, breakdowns aplenty and a clear injection of extreme metal influences, all resulting in one of Trivium's biggest-sounding and most explosive albums. Dusk Dismantled's stomping riffs and the razor-sharp hooks of Caustic Are The Ties That Bind make for essential inclusions on any self-respecting Trivium fan's best-of mix, while the title track hits so hard it has remained a setlist staple ever since. All together now...'IIIIIIIN WOIIIIIIIIIIIIIVVVESSSS!!!!'

Trivium - In Waves [OFFICIAL VIDEO] - YouTube

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4. In The Court Of The Dragon (2021)

Confirmation that Trivium were no longer simply a band on good form but attaining a consistent level of quality that most of their peers would kill for at this (or perhaps any) stage of their careers, In The Court Of The Dragon marked a first for the quartet: a third truly kickass album on the trot. Building on their now well-honed mixture of fearless, multilayered song craft, big-ass hooks and foot-to-the-floor heavy metal thunder, the band's tenth studio album showed that they were finally comfortable in their own skins and ably dabbling in myriad styles without ever compromising their identity. Thrash metal, death metal, groove metal, power metal, black metal, even a touch of hair metal histrionics...it's all here, and it all slams. This is the album that confirmed beyond a doubt that no one else is making contemporary heavy metal on Trivium's level.

Trivium - In The Court Of The Dragon [OFFICIAL VIDEO] - YouTube

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3. What The Dead Men Say (2020)

Where The Sin And The Sentence set things right by letting Trivium, well, just be Trivium, What The Dead Men Say took the career-spanning formula of its predecessor, beefed it up even more and let it rip. The band's newly established confidence shines through in everything from the full-throttled attack of Amongst The Shadows & The Stones to the insanely catchy choruses of The Catastrophist, Bleed Into Me and Scattering The Ashes. The extra added spice? Relative new boy Alex Bent, whose powerhouse performance behind the kit only adds to the sense that this was a band mastering their craft once more, with a bulletproof album full of outstanding songs to prove it.

Trivium - What The Dead Men Say [OFFICIAL VIDEO] - YouTube

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2. Ascendancy (2005)

So much has already been written about Ascendancy’s impact, but even two decades on it still sounds like it could take on the world and smugly laugh atop its fallen adversary. When every track could be a single (even the B-sides are essential!) and the likes of Light To The Flies and Pull Harder On The Strings Of Your Martyr are worn into the very fabric of the story of 21st century metal, it’s easy to see why the band were hailed as heavy music's new heroes when it first arrived. It might not technically be Trivium's first album, but in terms of landing a first impression on the broader metal world, few bands have ever done it as ferociously or convincingly as this. An undeniable, iron-clad classic.

1. Shogun (2008)

Though Ascendancy has the romantic backstory, Shogun not only matches it for songwriting but full-on trumps it on scope. Shaking off the 'appeal to everybody and everything at once' approach that was ultimately The Crusade's undoing, Shogun simply unleashes the band's most creative instincts and songwriting chops, moulded into shape by the high-concept historical and mythical lyricism of Matt Heafy. As musically epic and adventurous as his storytelling, Trivium's bold ideas are fully realised on the prog-laden mini-sagas of Kirisute Gomen, while the absurd crescendo of the closing title-track is arguably the band’s most compelling moment to date. Oh, and it's packing straight-up bangers too, not least courtesy of the skyscraper-sized hooks of Into The Mouth Of Hell We March and one of their very best singles in Down From The Sky. Shogun isn't just Trivium's best album; it's one of the best metal records of its or any era.

Trivium - Down From The Sky [OFFICIAL VIDEO] - YouTube

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Trivium and Bullet For My Valentine are on the current cover of Metal Hammer. They are currently touring the UK in celebration of 20 years of Ascendancy and The Poison