with Trivium

By Mike Hume

It’s the stuff of legends. Metal band Trivium wraps their set in Atlanta and preps to head for a final gig in their hometown of Orlando … only Hurricane Charlie is sweeping across Florida. Does that stop them? Hell no. This is heavy metal baby.

Drummer Travis Smith straps in behind the wheel of the band’s van and plows down the highway and into the eye of the storm, pushing through wild winds and walls of water to reach their hometown fans and give them the show they crave. So sayeth the legend.

That’s how it happened, right?

“It wasn’t that big a deal,” Smith replies nonchalantly. “There weren’t like cows and trees and chickens flying by us or anything. There was no one on the road so it made it kind of an easy drive. To be honest we really didn’t drive through the hurricane — we’d be dead.”

That’s all?

“Yeah, it was towards the end of the tour so we really wanted to get home. Especially since we had an off day after the Orlando show.”

Oh.

Well, hot acts on the rise are prone to hyperbole. And while their extreme weather-related exploits may be a tad exaggerated, there is nothing overstated about Trivium’s talent.

And being as how they’ve often been hailed as the next Metallica, that’s saying something. For some time now the young (at 23, Smith is the eldest member), but immensely talented foursome of Smith, frontman/guitarist Matt Heafy, guitarist Corey Beaulieu and bassist Paolo Gregoletto has been generating high praise from metal lovers across the globe. While oftentimes the buzz amounts to little more than a PR company’s pitch-lines, Trivium’s triumphs have been more than vetted.

They sound like a Vulgar Display of Power-era Pantera — that’s Trivium as described by Rita Abbott, the widow of “Dimebag” Darryl Abbott, the late-Pantera guitarist who was shot and killed on stage by a crazed fan just over a year ago.

“That’s such a great compliment, because that’s a f---ing badass album,” Smith says.

Last year Rita Abbott heard Trivium play a show in San Antonio, Texas. Afterwards she was so impressed she invited Smith and Beaulieu over to her house. Two months ago, on the one-year anniversary of Darryl’s death, Rita overnighted a pair of his guitars to the band for their show at 9:30 Club. Beaulieu and Heafy used the axes to rock out a medley of Pantera’s “Walk” and “Domination.” She is also currently joining Trivium for their month-long North American tour with InFlames, which included a stop back at 9:30 Club last Thursday.

“I was nervous when I first met her,” Smith says. “But she said that from that first show she was blown away. She’s such a lovely woman. She’s really making our dreams come true.”

To hear Trivium, you wonder how any band can sustain that level of energy for such a long duration. Turns out Smith wonders too.

“I don’t really know,” says Smith, whose build is not exactly Henry Rollins-esque. “I do a lot of stretching, but it’s really all mental. Once you hit the stage and see the fans, it just gets wiped from your head and you don’t even think about it.”

The endurance could have something to do with Smith’s 18 years of practice time. He’s been beating the skins since getting his first drum kit at age 5 — granted it was of the Wal-Mart variety. His father’s love of music helped him log some serious hours behind the kit, as his parents didn’t mind the dusk-till-midnight banging and crashing in their garage.

“Better than being a gang banger,” Smith says. “They probably thought it was better to beat the crap out of some drums in the garage.”

Smith has been banging the drums heavy-metal style ever since he accidentally purchased Pantera’s Cemetary Gates. For some extra volume, he even borrowed his buddies’ kits, tuning them a little differently, and combined them his own.

“Bigger is always better,” Smith, who now plays a nine-piece kit, complete with dual 24-inch kick drums, says.

Smith makes the most out of that nine-piece ensemble on Ascendancy, supplying the jackhammer beats to drive Heafy’s growling and brooding vocals (and screams), and Beaulieu’s ferocious licks. With Smith adding the weight to Trivium’s metal, the band storms through twelve power-packed tracks that will leave you wondering how these guys don’t need some sort of Red Bull transfusion after every song. But that atomic energy is just a complement to the meticulously scribed songs, rather than an distraction to obscure lazy composition. By infusing their carefully crafted tunes with nuclear dynamism, it seems only a matter of time before this musical alchemy turns Trivium’s metal into gold … or platinum. That formula has earned them the praise of at least one well-credentialed critic, that would be Abbott, and as these young bloods progress that praise is sure to multiply.