M: Let’s see, really quickly. Picked up the guitar when I was eleven. I was horrible. Hadn’t got into metal yet. I was so bad I got kicked out of a pop-punk band. I got into metal at about twelve through the Black album. I did a bunch of talent shows when I was in seventh and then eight grade. The original singer of Trivium heard me play some Metallica and thus I made it to the band. Next thing you know, we did line-up changes and played shows forever and ever. Finally got signed to Lifeforce Records in 2003, signed to Roadrunner Records in 2004 and we’ve been on tour ever since.

M: I go through a lot of different phases when listening to music. On the heavy side it’s been Martyr’s Feeding The Abscess, Angra’s Temple Of Shadows and Gojira’s From Mars To Sirius. But I’ve been also listening to a lot of Coltrane, Miles Davis, the soundtracks of the Final Fantasy video games. Some lame radio rock as well. Kelly Clarkson’s Breakaway, I still love that CD. I listened to that a lot when writing material for The Crusade. It is about the most anti-metal CD you could listen to but I guess when you listen to that kind of stuff you end up writing what purely comes from within you. I guess, maybe *laughs*.

M: Shit, that’s really hard. You know, typically everyone would go “heavy, fast, technical” and all that but uuuhh…uhhh…You must decide for yourself.

M: I don’t know, man. I mean, Trivium has been around since 2000 and we’ve been making original music and playing shows since then. We did three European shows in 2003 but no one really came to those shows to see us, we were no one. I don’t know why and I don’t know how it happened, it was a little bit of luck but there was also a lot of hard effort. But it’s not just the hard effort because anyone can push themselves really hard, but if people aren’t connecting with you, it’s not going to happen. We have been very fortunate that we have so many great fans that connect with our music. Because we have always made music for ourselves and it just so happens that the music the four of us like connects with a lot of people. People can probably see that we are incredibly normal people. We have the same problems as everyone else and we’re not trying to act superhuman or put up any kind of façade of being tough metal gods or anything like that. Maybe people appreciate the realism of it, I’m not really sure what has made it.

M: I think the fun thing about music is that you can always find yourself differently in it. Like if you look at us from the early demos that no has ever heard of to this day the progression is huge. I wouldn’t necessarily say that we’ve gone in a more classic direction. If you look at a song like And Sadness Will Sear, it’s not really classic metal. For us, we never try to stick to one thing. We don’t start writing while thinking about making just pummelling metal or making just really fast thrash. We just try to make music, unclassified, ungenrefied. I think people will really notice that on the next album, which we have already begun writing. It takes the best parts of Ascendancy and The Crusade and takes them to the next plateau.

M: It’s always a bit different. With The Crusade we had to write individually, because we did the work while on the road. Everyone came up with from 60 percent to a full song on their own. Then we entered the pre-production mode for a week and each of us taught everyone else their material and we filtered through the riffs. Then we recorded the new album in six weeks and headed back on the road. It was different for Ascendancy, because we weren’t touring that much. We had many riffs, some of which had been around forever. We put them together in our rehearsal space, so that album was written more as a band.

M: You know, I do love all kinds of music, but I think there are already some defining points to this band now. I mean, we definitely couldn’t make a rap song, we couldn’t make a country…well, Travis (drummer Smith) loves country. I like some country, I guess. There is this one band, called The Devil Makes Three, they are a fucking amazing country folk band. So there are certain guidelines that we know we wouldn’t want to do.

M: When I first started to sing for Trivium I was 13-14 years old. I hadn’t even gone through puberty yet so my voice hadn’t really developed. It sounded like shit. But we couldn’t find another singer for the band and I really wanted to be the singer. Also, Travis, who has always been like an older brother to me, said too that “you’re gonna sing in the band”. At first, I was reluctant but he kept encouraging me to do it. So I started to sing for the band but we soon found out I couldn’t sing worth shit. It wasn’t super high, it was super low. About my talking pitch, that was the highest I could sing. It was really bad, and the only thing I could do for some reason was screaming, so that became 100 percent of the vocals. Then eventually, the singing voice came in and got better with each album passing by. Then by The Crusade, it just about got to the point, where I could get rid of most of the screaming and do what I’ve always wanted to do as a singer. I’m constantly trying to expand and widen my range, to experiment with new things. It is a different experience live, because we still do many Ascendancy songs that have full screaming vocals and we have Corey (guitarist Beaulieu) do the screams live, because he can do them better than I ever could live. Paolo (bassist Gregoletto) also sings back-ups so it’s a very different thing on stage with three vocalists in the band.

M: *laughs* I don’t know…well, I’m sure there has been some multi-layered screaming on some of the older stuff. There’s another band that people should check out if they want to hear the old screaming stuff, Caphernaum, a technical death metal band that I was in when I was sixteen. As for Queen-like harmonies in general, we will definitely be doing those on the next record. There are some of them on The Crusade as well, they’re just a little buried.

M: A lot, definitely. I mean, there are a lot of bands out there that have incredible music and pointless lyrics or incredible lyrics and pointless music. I think it’s very important to have both, because there is a certain audience for both and a certain audience for all. There are some fans that really care what I say and some that don’t care what I say but just want to rock out. On Ascendancy the lyrics were mainly about personal struggle, because I hadn’t yet written songs about it. On Ember To Inferno I hadn’t even gone through enough struggle to know what it really is, so I just wrote about life. On Ascendancy there is also stuff about some social issues like domestic violence, child abuse, depression, suicide, very dark stuff that’s in human nature. On The Crusade there is some personal stuff, but there is a strong first person view on what I see in the world. I’m an extremely accepting person on all kinds of people. I’m anti-racist, anti-homophobic, anti-sexist, and all that, so I wanted to take a collection of current events that I could make into stories, so there would be an underlying theme. Like And Sadness Will Sear is about Matthew Shepherd, who was a gay kid, who was practically beaten to death and tied to a fence. This happened in the US in the late 90s. I write about such things so our fans, even the younger ones, could find out about these things and even try to make a change.

M: Very good, it’s been really fantastic. This has been our first full-blown headliner tour of Europe. I mean, we’ve done the UK many times, I think this is our fourth or fifth time, when including the jaunts with Roadrage and Iron Maiden. For this tour we’ve been out there in the UK with Annihilator, Gojira and Sanctity and now through Europe with Annihilator and Sanctity; it’s been phenomenal. I mean, take here in Helsinki, we were supposed to play in Nosturi (a club, takes about 700-800 people -ed.note-) but it sold out so we got bumped to here in the Culture House (a concert hall, takes about 1500-2000 people), which had an orchestra playing earlier today, which was slightly weird when considering who will take the stage next *laughs*. Since this is the first of hopefully many headlining tours of Europe and Scandinavia and all the amazing places, we’ve been having a really good time with it.

M: Well, it’s very different, whether it’s a headliner gig or a support gig. If we’re supporting, then it’s balls-out, no bullshit, keeping it heavy and aggressive. But when we’re headlining, we are in front of our own fans, so it’s more about having a good time, keeping it personal, and playing stuff from all of the albums. Everyone keeping everyone happy.

M: Yes, we’ve been recording stuff and really been preparing for a DVD forever and ever, but we will wait until the time is right. Like, a couple of months ago, six months before that everyone was releasing a DVD, every band under the sun.

Even bands that had like one album under their belts so far.

M: Exactly. So we want to wait a bit until we have more CDs and have done some crazy F’n shows and release it all in this one amazing package. Like for example, we just recently got a DVD of our very first European show ever. We have the ancient demos, which we recorded when we were twelve, thirteen, fourteen. So we may want to package all of that together some day to make something really special.

M: Yeah, that’s a story that’s been exaggerated over the years. It wasn’t really that bad. We were at a gig in Atlanta and driving to Orlando, where we had a gig and where we could hang out with our friends. So we were on the road and I guess there was hurricane. I’m not sure because we slept through it, so there definitely were no cows flying around or anything like that. Travis just drove through it and no one woke up.

But what if Travis just kept the truth from you to save you from a shock?

M: No, he said it was fine and if it had been really bad, he would have gone all “HOLY S%#¤” on us. Travis is a really vocal person *laughs*.

M: Actually, I kind of don’t like either. Definitely not the first one, because people get hurt and it looks stupid. The second one, well…people can get hurt and it looks kinda stupid. I’d rather have people just headbanging, banging their fists and clapping. I don’t like our fans getting hurt.

- Jester Race or Whoracle

M: Jester Race

- a club or an arena

M: Uhhh, both. Can I pick both?

Well, in this case it is permitted.

- a roadie or a groupie

M: Uhh, for me a roadie.

Yes, a groupie can’t most likely lift a stack of Marshalls into the truck.

M: Yeah. A groupie is just there to lift your balls in their mouth *laughs*.

M: Uhh…man, this is going to be super-geeky, but I bought a Nintendo DS and nine games back home and I asked my mom to send them out to me. I’ve been waiting for them for two weeks. They were supposed to be here today and for some reason they are stuck in fucking customs right now and I am so pissed off. I just want it, I want my DS *laughs*.

M: Yesterday, when I thought I would get my DS today. *laughs*

M: It’s all over the place, man. Some of it is the fastest shit we’ve ever done, some of it the most technical stuff we’ve ever done. I’ve got something like ten songs in my head and I’ve been picking out the good stuff and I hopefully don’t forget anything. The stuff of the other band members has been great as well so, like I said, it will be the best things of the previous two albums and going forward.

M: The deepest essence of metal? Manowar.

M: Likewise, a huge thank you for all the supporters out there. We couldn’t be here without you.