Check out this cool article at alt press.com where Matt Heafy of Trivium talks about each track on the band’s killer new album, In Waves.
And check back tomorrow for my interview with Heafy and co-guitarist Corey Beaulieu. A snippet from Corey:
“We just thought after playing some of those songs on the tour cycle for that record, some of the stuff was so involved on guitar that it was hard to have fun during the show because we were concentrating so much on what we were playing. We just wanted to write stuff that was fun so the songs were more straight to the point and easier to get into, and not be this crazy, technical guitar album. We just didn’t feel like playing those long, elaborate songs. We wanted really energetic, fun songs that people could get a hold of and get into really easily.”
“This whole record is a response to everything we see in music and in metal. It’s always done the same way: a band will release a song, then release the album cover, and they explain what every little thing is supposed to mean. But we didn’t want to do it that way. It’s exactly like you said: we wanted to control the flow of information. I always thought it irritating that people seem to know the album title and cover so early, and people make their entire assumption about the record in just those little ways. So we set up all those teasers, and we didn’t announce the record title until after “In Waves” was out, and people didn’t know yet that In Waves was the record title. So we wanted to make it more of an experience like it used to be. Even when I was a kid, when a band was about to release a record, it was a little more exciting. You didn’t know everything that was going on, all the details of the record. We wanted to make it fun for the listener, and fun for people to wait for the record to come out. And it’s worked out really well. There have been little weird things, like Amazon posted little 30-second samples of every song, and we didn’t know they were going to do that, but we decided to embrace it and use it to our advantage, so I tweeted about it and suddenly thousands of kids were able to listen to the samples. But then some will make their whole assumption of the record based on a 30-second sample of a chorus. That’s what’s gonna happen, but there’s still that mystique with the record, because it hasn’t leaked, knock on wood. I’m sure it will before it comes out but, knock on wood, I hope it doesn’t because since there’s so much emphasis on the music and the visuals on this record; the visuals are something you really can’t duplicate by ripping it online. You have to get the special edition to see the documentary, the live video, the packaging, the vinyl that comes with the special edition, all that good stuff. It’s more about making it an old-school physical experience of an album.”
