MONTREAL, QC - JULY 29: Matt Heafy of Trivium performs at the Heavy Montreal festival at Parc ... [+]
Orlando, Florida’s finest, Trivium, have been a household name in the metal genre ever since their breakout album, Ascendency (2005). On March 15th, the record was actually celebrating it’s fifteenth anniversary, and in true celebratory fashion Trivium vocalist & guitarist, Matt Heafy, honored the record with a full album playthrough live on his Twitch channel, Kiichichaos. Album playthroughs are one of the many activites featured on Matt’s growing channel, which boasts a total viewership of 3.5 million views and a subscriber count of over five thousand.
On a daily basis Matt streams everything from video games, guitar clinics, to Trivium and acoustic song covers, all while he’s off the road and awaiting the next Trivium album-tour cycle. And for the professional touring musician, Twitch is proving itself a financial phenomenon. It’s fascinating to see this modern convention not only provide a second financial outlet, but simultaneously embolden an artist’s brand, specifically for a metal band like Trivium.
Following the release of their Grammy nominated 2017 record, The Sin And The Sentence, Trivium are gearing up for what might be their most a ambitious record to date, What The Dead Men Say. Since their last album, Matt’s Twitch career has seemingly taken off, and while it’s made up and geared toward Trivium fans, it’s surely enough bolstered the connection he has with the Trivium fanbase.
That being said, this ninth album could see Trivium an Ascendency-like cataclysm, taking them from ‘relevant’ to ‘on top’ in the metal scene. Also in favor of this, What The Dead Men Say is the first Trivium album that wields a sound thematic to it’s predecessor, and it just so happens to be their first album with a returning drummer in over 6 years.
As their ninth album awaits it’s April 24th release, it will be truly interesting to see where this record stands amongst their entire discography, but more importantly how it elevates Trivium both sonically and fiscally. Sharing more on the matter, Trivium’s own Matt Heafy talks all things Dead Men and his ever growing Twitch channel.
Trivium’s latest single, “Catastrophist,” has already racked well over a million streams since it’s release. What drove this song lyrically as well as the music video direction?
So for this record we wanted to make sure that every single thing had the due attention that it deserved. With Trivium, we’ve always tried to put the same emphasis that a band would put into their music, into the lyrics, the visuals, the music videos, the band photos, the merch, literally everything that we could possibly nail and that would be Trivium stuff. With this one, we really felt like we had to take it to another level, and to see how we could take it to different place we looked across our entire history in seeing what we had felt we’d done right.
The time I felt we really nailed music videos was on the In Waves (2011) record. What we did on the In Waves record was make these mini movies, and we made them opposite of what the ideal music video was, which was having no performances. Before In Waves we didn’t really have the music video angle nailed in our own unique way, and then we went back to the normal performance videos. And with [What The Dead Men Say] we knew we wanted to bring back the cinematic styles, so we got in touch with this director named Ryan Mackfall, who has actually been listening to our band since about 2005. He saw us at our first big show in the UK at that legendary download festival, so he kind of grew up with our band. He took the lyrics and interpreted them into what he saw as the ideas for the video, and then we passed ideas back and fourth to nail upon what it is. With that being said, what we want to do with this record is to make and encourage the listeners to come up with their own interpretations of what each thing means.
Regarding imagery, you guys have always had some of the most unique album art in the metal. What exactly is the album artwork for What The Dead Men Say? How do you come up with and decide the cover art for each album?
So the actual thing the cover is is it’s a flower that’s slightly on fire, but what I love about the image is you can’t really tell it’s a flower — it looks like it could be sea life or alien life. When we found out what it was we weren’t sure if it was catching fire or being put out from the fire. I really like that and love that everyone I’ve talked to has such a different depiction. What the art really comes down to is the band has always put a lot of care into it, but our art director who’s actually my wife, Ashley [Heafy], she graduated from the Chicago Institute of Art, and she’s always been there helping out kind of lending another eye and opinion for the visuals.
For Sin And The Sentence and What The Dead Men Say, she has really taken full charge of becoming the art director. What she did this time around is she found amazing artists that she knew would deliver on each platform. So Mike Dunn, the photographer that did the band photographs, Ashley noticed that one of the props he had was this decaying flower. She mentioned to Mike if he could expand upon that, and he did a thousand tests of maybe fifty different flowers. Finally we saw that one and it seemed like everyone in the band gravitated towards it specifically because it looked the strangest. The rest looked like flowers, but this one looked so alien.
Among other things, with this record you’ve officially broken the so called ‘spinal tap curse,’ you have a returning drummer for the new album. How did this impact the writing process now having a solidified drummer for two albums straight?
Yes we finally did it, and I know it seems like a lot but including Alex [Bent] we’ve had four studio drummers. What’s great is when we finally brought Alex into the fold of the last record [The Sin And The Sentence], we weren’t getting the questions of “why did you do this?” With the other drummers we had, they had their strengths but also I’m sure they could admit that they’ve had their weaknesses as well. We’ve had drummers that are great for simplistic playing but can’t get overly technical, and we’ve had technical players that can’t get simplistic.
Alex lives in both of those spaces and can accomplish everything between. If you look at this record look at a song like “Sickness Unto You,” that song has a Latin beat about three quarters of the way through the song right before the final chorus. It’s a Latin beat that has blast beats before and after it, rock and metalcore beats as well, so for someone that can play absolutely everything in one, it has really unleashed the reins on our band. We don’t feel like one of us can’t accomplish what we need to accomplish.
Overall, how do you see your ninth album as it relates to the variety of sounds and sub-genres fans have attributed to Trivium over the last 20 years?
I feel like for the first time in our history we’ve had two records in a row that haven’t had a drastic difference in sound. That’s always been something we’ve liked to do, as in we never wanted to give the same thing twice. Ascendency (2005) blew up in the UK and became a gold record, but it also was the only time and place in Trivium’s career where there were magazines and press putting us on their front covers. Besides that point and time, that has really never happened. There’s never been a moment where we’ve been a press-starring band, or a band that other bands champion. I’m not saying that to be salty or anything like that, but that really is true.
With Ascendency in the UK, when that record did very well I looked around and started saying “man there’s some people that don’t like our band,” so I wanted to show them what else we could do and show them that we are a metal band. I mean Ascendency is metal as hell, but I wanted to go against what we just did and rebel against our own sound and do everything the opposite. Whatever ingredient that was key on Ascendency we needed to do the opposite, so that’s what The Crusade (2006) was. And then the UK went from saying that we’re going to be the next biggest band in the world to saying we’re the worst band in the world, we’re over. So we kind of dealt with that for the first time, and then The Crusade picked up in the rest of Europe. So we’ve always had factions of fans that say “Ascendency is the best,” “Shogun is the best,” or say “In Waves is the best,” but finally with The Sin And The Sentence (2017) we brought them all together. And what both The Sin And The Sentence and What The Dead Men Say have in common is they have the ingredients of the best of everything we’ve ever done.
Apart from you’re career in Trivium, you’ve delved into other media and entertainment outlets specifically Twitch. What exactly led you to pursue this avenue with streaming video games and music related content on Twitch?
Well I’ve always been into video games, I remember beating Mario before I was really speaking English — my mom is Japanese and she kind of raised me for a little while on her own while my dad was in the Marines. So video games were something I was playing before I started playing guitar. I started with the originals like Mario and Donkey Kong, kind of building my way up and then I was heavily into RPG’s as a preteen to my teenage years with Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy IV, VI, VII and IX were my favorites, and then I started getting into first person shooters like Call of Duty, but I got into those through Golden Eye. I started watching some streamers and decided I wanted to do it, but I did it kind of half-assed at first, and not that I was being lazy about it, I just didn’t really know the right way to do it.
I later befriended two Twitch associates, John Howell and Brandon Kaupert, and they invited me to the Twitch headquarters one day when Trivium was playing San Fransisco. So I went down and they gave me a tour of the place and they lent me one of the Gunrun backpacks, which I was using to stream the shows with. So I started streaming some shows and it started going pretty good, and then I visited San Francisco and met up with Brandon and John again, and I told them “man I love Twitch so much I wish I could do it more, but here’s why I can’t,” and the reason I couldn’t is because I have to practice between one to three to five hours a day to keep myself in shape. And Brandon looks at me and says “why don’t you just stream that?” I had an ‘aha’ moment and I was like “no body wants to watch that dude,” and he said “trust me, just try that.”
So lo and behold, I’ve only had one job ever, it’s been Trivium, first band, first job, but for the last three years I’m happy to say Twitch has become a second job. When I’m at home I make significantly more from Twitch streaming than I do with Trivium, and then when I’m out on tour with Trivium then obviously Trivium becomes more and twitch becomes less. But the fact that I’m able to make money doing what I should be doing off tour, staying conditioned, practicing, and being ready for a tour at any given moment, it’s amazing and we really have a supportive community.
From Twitch streaming to Trivium being featured on the latest Mortal Kombat DLC trailer, do you think Trivium’s audience or metalheads in general share a commonality with video games?
Absolutely, I’ve always felt like video games and metal are there for the underdog. I’ve always felt like they’re for the people that don’t want to do the conventional thing of what you’re supposed to do. I love the fact that Colleges are starting to embrace Esports in addition to traditional sports. It’s been truly amazing, and as I’ve mentioned, Trivium has never really been a press band, but when I started streaming on Twitch I started to see all these gaming developers that were popping up and saying “hey man I’ve been a fan of your band forever.”
I’ve seen quite a few Mortal Kombat fans that are Trivium fans, I’ve found that some people who play Fotnite and even the developers are Trivium fans, and on the Overwatch design team the Overwatch programmers are Trivium fans. It’s really cool to finally see that our fans who grew up listening to us have now gone on to do some amazing things and now are able to, I don’t want to say pay it forward, but they are, they’re helping us out by putting us up on their incredible platform. I’m really happy to see that, and I can’t disclose too much yet, but there’s a massive Esports team that we’re big fans of that’s asking us to do some stuff with them, so that’s on the horizon as well.
