MetalSucks

If you hit up Trivium’s most recent U.S. tour with Chimaira, you may have noticed an absence of drummer Travis Smith. When the tour started, the band said that Smith “will not be joining us on this leg and is home taking care of some personal business.” Filling-in for him on the tour was his drum tech, Maruta’s Nick Augusto.

Meanwhile, we’d heard some rumors from a pretty reputable source that Smith wasn’t coming back at all. We didn’t say anything at the time ’cause sometimes someone tells you something off the record and it’s not cool to print that kinda thing (even we’re not that dickish)… but now that Metal Underground is reporting the rumor, fuck it. We don’t think Smith is coming back to Trivium.

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Trivium’s new album, Shogun, gets its official release on Roadrunner a week from today, but the entire album is currently streaming on the band’s MySpace page.

If you’re one of the people who showed enough restraint not to download the album when it leaked a little while back, here’s your chance to preview before you buy. Or, if you’re one of those people who hates Trivium the way Sarah Palin hates science, here’s your chance to know thy enemy, as the saying goes. Y’know, in the unlikely event you wanna try and make an intelligent argument against the band, instead of just calling them and their fans “fagets.”

Also, read our interview with Trivium’s Matt Heafy and Corey Beaulieu here.

-AR

Trivium’s new video, “Down from the Sky,” has hit the web, and apparently, director Ramon Boutviseth really likes the color green, or the movie Saw, or both.

ANYWAY, I actually really like the video. If you’re gonna incorporate found footage for the sake of trying to give your clip an apocalyptic feeling, using vintage newsreels is a much better move than using newer stuff. And while this isn’t necessarily the song I would have chosen to represent the band’s new album, Shogun, enough people have already heard some of the other stuff from the album that I s’pose it doesn’t really matter.

One thing I could live without in this video: the part at the beginning where the band is doing those hero poses. I know it’s a video and a certain amount of staging is to be expected, but come on, what year is this?

Roadrunner will release Shogun on September 30. While you’re thinking about it, why not read our interview with Matt Heafy and Corey Beaulieu?

-AR