With Trivium’s latest record, Silence In The Snow, demonstrating a significant musical shift from the 2013’s Vengeance Falls, it is perhaps no surprise to find that the album not only draws upon a different palette of influences but was also created in rather different circumstances. Having long adopted a ‘preparation is key’ approach, the group went back to their roots, investing serious time into jamming as a complete band before entering the studio, rediscovering the benefits of maximising time in the rehearsal room in the process.
“We realised how important it is to our band to get in the rehearsal space and just jam as a group,” admits Corey. “So this time we spent two weeks before our producer Michael Baskette started working with us, just jamming. Playing the songs as a group so many times before recording it has meant that the record has much more of a live, organic sound to it. The way it flows doesn’t feel as jumpy and playing this stuff live feels way more natural. We did it a different way on the last record but there was something that we missed that really brought some extra life to the music.”
“I’m not a big fan of team sports,” adds Matt, “but the best metaphor for that is all the preparation that goes into a big game. During the actual game, that’s where you’re all performing, that’s when all the hard work you put in is supposed to kick in. It’s not during the game that you should be improving or analysing yourself. We put so much time into the preparation; I know some bands that think, ‘I’m going to get better on tour, I’m going to get better while making the record’, but in my experience that never happens.”
There’s no doubt that their decision to record Vengeance Falls in the home studio of Disturbed mainman David Draiman took some fans by surprise and as mentioned this time around the band have opted for a complete change of scene, the record produced by Michael Baskette (Slash, Alter Bridge) and mixed by Josh Wilbur (Gojira, Lamb Of God). The the group were also able to craft the new opus without travelling too far from their homes each day – a major plus for everyone concerned, as Corey explains.
“Especially being on tour so long, the last thing we wanted to do was take more time from home to go make a record,” he laughs. “It was nice to be actually able to get up and do your normal day-to-day things, then go to the studio, work and come home again, hang out with your friends, let loose and just disconnect from being stuck in a dark studio, not seeing sunlight and being in a strange city where you don’t know anything.”
“It was a lot of fun being in someone’s home and I really enjoyed living in David’s house,” Matt points out. “We could watch the fights at the weekend, go to restaurants and it was much more of a family dynamic than when we did the new record. But it was also good to switch setting. We tried a lot of things; our first three records were recorded in a converted garage, the fourth was recorded in a multi-million country studio in Tennessee, the fifth one was done in a strip mall converted studio, the sixth in David Draiman’s guest room and the new one in a converted garage professional studio. There’s been a lot of variety and I have to be honest and say that nothing we’ve found in our career so far sounds better than the other one.”
