I figured that since I constantly crack on Trivium, I might as well be fair and put myself in the electric chair with Trivium’s new album. A lot of people probably read my rantings and have no idea what I’m going on about with my dislike of Trivium. Though no one has done so yet, I’m pretty sure that if one of Hot Topic’s ardent shoppers or staff were to wander into Teufel’s Tomb’s coroner of the world wide web he or she would question my tastes and accuse me of being horribly biased against Trivium from the fact they’re a popular metalcore act and not on the actual content itself. Brushing aside the fact that "objective reviewing" is a mythical concept akin to a unicorn (if it was objective it wouldn’t be a review people!), I’m in reality far from hating Trivium for such a baseless reason.

Good metalcore does exist. It’s rare, it’s seemingly impossible, but it exists. The now-defunct Isle Of Man demonstrated this with full effect. They delivered metalcore of such quality that it deserved the praise of even the most jaded metal critic. And while the song was a joke by a band considerably not based in the genre, the metalcore parody "Dying Will Be the Death of Me" by hydrogrind masters Cephalic Carnage showed that you could make a song that conformed to the clichés of the genre and yet still have it be brutal, vicious, and bloody fucking metal. Good metalcore exists; it’s just waiting to be harvested.

I’ll be honest. If it wasn’t for 2 problems that have plagued Trivium for several albums, Trivium would be an excellent band. Trivium actually does demonstrate this at one point in the album (more on that later). And as I’ve mentioned repeatedly prior to this review, leader Matt Heafy does have quality metal to his name with his vocal duties in the supremely capable technical death metal outfit Capharnaum. The 2 problems that plague Trivium are as follows: Trivium has practically never written a song in its existence and has no idea how to make the cliché elements of metalcore relevant to the metal riffs they blatantly steal. The final product resembles a counterfeit of a Renaissance masterpiece of art, shredded and re-assembled together with poorly colored pages from a Sponge Bob Squarepants coloring book.

Don’t believe me, oh zealous Trivium fan and Ozzfest attendee? Go prep up your copy of "Pull Harder On The Strings of Your Martyr" and then download Carcass’s "Corporal Jigsore Quandary". Notice anything? Yep, Trivium basically took it and a couple of other influences, rearranged it, and copy-pasted at random clean vocal metalcore bits here and there without any care to how it meshed with the rest of the song.

This horrible mix also plagues The Crusade. The truth of there matter is that The Crusade simply doesn’t exist. It was never recorded or made. This is a re-edited Master Of Puppets. Every other riff on this album is a Metallica riff from that era. Every other one. A multitude of the vocal harmonies and effects are pulled straight off the record. Matt Heafy spends the entirety of the record in a James Hetfield impersonation with the exception of the times where the cliché melodic metalcore chorus kicks in. In the few moments where the classic Metallica riffs aren’t being ripped off (there’s like 2 or 3 instances total), the riffs are still ripped off some generic act that escapes my brain at the moment. Given Trivium’s track record, it’s safe to assume this other band exists and I’m not just dreaming it.

Now, you’re probably scoffing "But Necro-tron, didn’t you give Trivium’s Metallica cover a decent rating?" Yeah, I did. But that song involves merely that you replay it. That’s it. The credit still goes to Metallica for writing, and it’s recognized as such; the band merely replays it. This is different. Trivium is taking the credit, saying they wrote all these songs, and going to the bank with it. From a legal standpoint, they’re telling the truth, but that legal standard doesn’t actively reflect that even with the necessary changes a band can still come out ripping off another act in its entirety. Very little of this record can be called Trivium’s own work. The bulk of it is directly taken from or heavily mimicked from Metallica. Trivium merely re-arranged what goes where and inserted the a couple things.

"So, what? A bunch of metal bands rip off other bands. This is no different. Shouldn’t you be glad that they used such a great influence?" Hardly. Even if The Crusade was a carbon copy, the argument wouldn’t fly. Clones and worship bands are a dime a dozen, but the good ones are able to make a sound in the vein of a certain band while still sounding like a new entity. Rotten Sound and Gadget have a huge Nasum sound, but they distinguish themselves to make their albums worthy of praise. Same goes with Bodies Lay Broken and Carcass; retro thrash acts like Toxic Holocaust, Funerot, and Municipal Waste have no problem performing classic thrash worship while still maintaining their own identity as a separate entity. Trivium can’t seem to do that; they suffer the same ineptitude as The Black Dahlia Murder. Trivium’s problem goes further with the "original" material they do insert. After they’ve re-arranged the copied or "influenced" material, they insert all those metalcore clichés that abound. The problem is that despite their knowledge of metal to rip off and their choice taste in ripping it off, they can’t seem to figure out just HOW to add in metalcore clichés. They’re jarringly out of place and irrelevant to the rest of the record. For every couple of classic style thrash riffs and passable Hetfield impersonations that Trivium deals out, there is an alt metal or metalcore implementation that just doesn’t fit the song and makes you do a double take.

What makes it worse is that there’s a great band deep down inside Trivium, somewhere hiding. They have the technical ability, they obviously demonstrate the correct influences from their blatant five-fingered discounts, yet there’s something blocking them. And it’s incredibly apparent on the last song in The Crusade. The title track is really fucking good. I will expand on that: the title track of Trivium’s The Crusade is an excellent 8 minute instrumental firmly influenced by Dream Theater, Canvas Solaris, and other progressive metal and technical instrumental metals acts yet it still retains its own feel and identity. You’ll sit through this entire record, not knowing whether to laugh or cry at this immense thievery of an album, and then when you hit the final track, you’ll be smacked with an abrupt about-face that will just make you confused to such a point your brain will shut down. How the fuck did they spend all that time in a studio copy-pasting a whole Metallica album and make that instrumental? Is this a cruel joke by Trivium? Are they making these shit-tastic records as taunts to the rest of metal, as if to wag their dicks in the air at every capable band on an independent label? Nope, this is real. No joke.

I’m going to paraphrase an earlier comparison I’ve made about Trivium that is still applicable to The Crusade. Trivium is a lot like an incontinent retarded child running the Special Olympics. You severely want to cheer on the mongoloid fucker, but the second the gun goes off, he runs off in the wrong direction and breaks his catheter on a bush branch, dowsing people with the most vile, festering shit as they watch their drooling spawn waddle in glory to their dreams. After the shitheel trips and flops everywhere in a mass of excrement, quivering body lard, and gibberish, you don’t know whether to help him or run the other way, embarrassed to be spotted there. The Crusade continues this general tradition of shit spewing and horrible metal. You want good, solid metal with classic thrash influenced goodness? Don’t be a fucking pussy; go grab Frightmare’s Bringing Back The Bloodshed instead. You’ll thank me later after that fresh grinding thrash hits your ears. Written By: Necro-tron