Album Review: Vengeance Falls by Trivium

 

 

I've always wanted to like Trivium. Matt Heafy and Corey Beaulieu are undeniably very good guitar players, and they bring a level of musicianship that I find to be a cut above most other bands in this genre as of late. But there's always been a certain sense of overexertion to the music, a sense that the band is trying too damn hard to show off. During their set on the Trespass America festival in 2012, there were, if you can believe such a thing, too many solos. Just, too much in general. When David Draiman signed on to produce their sixth full length, most of the Internet metal press seemed to cry out in anguish but hopes were raised here. Draiman's instincts from years of producing Disturbed could refine and strip down Trivium a bit to a happy medium between their overly technical prior efforts and his discography.

 

Well, that much ended up being true, but the album's still not all it could've been, unfortunately.

Musically, my goals and hopes for the album were met. Heafy and Beaulieu still get plenty of chances to show off on their guitars, but not to an excessive degree, and never in a way that distracts or takes away from the overall song. The songs benefit greatly from the overall brevity, and the rhythm section of Paolo Gregoletto (there's a Mediterranean name for you) and the increasingly impressive Nick Augusto get even more of a chance to shine when attention isn't taken so far afield from their work.. Also, Heafy's gone back to his more melodic vocals from the much maligned album The Crusade, which readers will probably guess was a huge plus for me. The vocals were never the problem on The Crusade, the songs were. Heafy's much better off when he's not straining to scream in my opinion. The one downside of the vocals is that Draiman is clearly using some of the same filters and effects that he uses on his own voice which becomes a bit distracting at times. A producer always leaves his own stamp, his own sonic imprint on every album he makes, but Draiman's is visible to an unnecessary degree here. Some dialing back of his trademark sounds or a change might have helped things.

 

Before we get too far away from him though, Heafy's the recipient of the other primary criticism of the album. At best, the lyrics are decent and have enough parts to encourage crowd chanting and singing at concerts, at worst they come off as insipid and repetitive. For example, the last song, appropriately called The End is Nigh, eventually progresses into just repeating the title over and over again, and the rhyme scheme that dominated the lyrics before that wasn't exactly something to look back fondly on either. Trivium's lyrics have never exactly touched me, or affected me in any deep way, but they've also never distracted like this either.

 

Vengeance Falls is by no means terrible, it's just a shame that after six albums Trivium keeps coming back to the same phrase in my mind: close, but no cigar. Close enough that I'll probably keep listening in the hopes that they'll find it, but that begs the question at one point does one give up the fight?