Garza Podcast - 251 - TRIVIUM | Matt Heafy: New Album, Ascendancy Riffs, Emperor & Mental Breakdown

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

Garza sits down in-person with Matt Heafy. Vocalist & guitar player of heavy metal band TRIVIUM. New song “Dead Inside Of Me” out now! https://instagram.com/triviumbandGet ad free episodes, Garza’s guitar tone & more here: https://patreon.com/garzapodcast00:00 - How to Say “Heafy”02:22 - Japanese American Heritage08:24 - The Trivium Curse15:05 - Ihsahn & Emperor20:29 - Riff: Down From the Sky26:21 - Shogun30:52 - The Crusade32:36 - Band fighting & Lineup Changes39:12 - Matt Losing His Voice & Re-Learning to Sing/Scream41:36 - Riffs: Ember to Inferno47:58 - Learning Guitar, Metallica & High School Band48:18 - First Tours, Early Days & Roadrunner Records53:42 - Warp Zone Influence57:10 - Riff: Pull Harder on the Strings of Your Martyr1:04:35 - Ascendancy1:05:29 - More Riffs: Ember to Inferno1:07:18 - Riff: Suffocating Sight1:09:26 - Garza Learns New Trivium Riff1:17:38 - New Album Crown in the Grave1:20:01 - Matt’s Mental Breakdown & Nearly Quitting Trivium1:39:18 - Training & Teaching Jiu Jitsu1:48:22 - Alex Rudinger Joining Trivium1:53:44 - Voice Drops1:55:16 - Vocal Exercises2:01:23 - Matt Teaches Garza Jiu Jitsu Submissions2:10:08 - Matt’s Top 3 Albums

I have hair envy. I'm trying to grow my hair back out. I thought I was going bald, so I started shaving it. And then Paula's like, you're not going bald, so I started growing it back. You got to grow it back. Yeah, oh, I am. I am, definitely. I'm trying.

We'll see what happens. Yeah, but it's such a... Mine's super curly. Super curly. Yeah, but it's such a... It's such a pain, dude. Like, all, like, pretty much, like, majority of my day is just... It looks good, though, man.

Both you guys have good hair. Yeah, Tate, taking care of... You've got a good hairline, too, man. I don't have a hairline like that. Genes, Spanish jeans. Yeah, my hairline's always been far back. Japanese jeans. Hey, I bet like you tell Corey or like your band, hey, you know what?

I'm going to grow up my hair and they're like, yeah, right, dude. Well, Paulo was the one he's like, dude, you're not going bald. Grow up back. It's like, Paulo, I'm bald. I can't. He's like, he's like, you're not. Just try it. Paulo's bald, right?

Yes, he's properly bald. Yeah. Nice. He's like, he brought up the, uh, did you see Larry David, do you use the George Costanza thing, when George Costanza would see someone using a wheelchair. that wasn't actually handicapped. Or no, someone, someone shaving their head where they're not actually bald.

And George Costanza got super mad about it. Did you watch Seinfeld growing up? No. Oh, okay. I'm very, I know the show, but I haven't really. Yeah, Elaine had a boyfriend who was a swimmer, so he'd shave his head. And George was like, wait a second,

he actually grow his hair. That's like someone being in a wheelchair for the fun of it. Oh, yeah. He was very offended. All right, we got to settle something right now. Yeah. After doing some research on you,

are you sick of people mispronouncing your, last name? I'm not. I'm not. So is it Matt Hafei? Hafei. Hafei. Heyfe. Yes. It's Irish. I've heard three different versions. Heifie. People said hefty. Healy. Because I grew up with heathy, but then during interviews, people kept saying hefe and you will never correct them. Yeah, I just I'm just like, okay, is it like a nickname thing? No, no. It's so it's properly pronounced Hafei. I believe Ellis Island when my dad's family immigrated, it was O. Hafei, but H-A-E-F-E-E-E-F-Y. which looks more like Haifi, and then it got shifted to Heafi.

It looks like Heafi is what it looks like. Yeah. Well, Matt, it's great to a see you. Yeah, thanks so much for having me, man. And you were born in Japan, correct? Yep, Iwakuni, Japan. Okay, and you were there for only one year. One year, yeah.

My dad's a Marine, so he was stationed in Iwakuni. My mom's from Hiroshima. Nice. So that's where they, I didn't fully hear the story of how they met. They never really told me. But all... Not really. My family, we don't really talk about, like, the past too much.

Like my family, me, my kids and my wife, we do. But my family didn't as much. But what was interesting about it is that where my dad was stationed, the Marines were like, yeah, that we don't encourage you marrying like the locals. And of course, my mom is from Hiroshima. So that's like a place that was bombed in the war. So it's like these two people who. And talk about the past.

Yeah, despite everything still found love. And then here here sits this guy. What's up everybody? Real quick, are you tired of these ads? I am too. If you join our Patreon, you get these episodes ad free. I'm talking, and you press play and boom, front to back heat. If you don't like waiting for Monday, you get early access to episodes and get to see the podcast before everyone else.

I also do exclusive live streams where you can hang out with me every month and much more. Check it out at patreon.com slash Garza podcast. That's patreon.com slash Garza podcast or click the link in the description below. See you there. Trivium, a great band that's been through a lot. Yes, sir, a lot. A lot. It's been, it's crazy.

It's been since 99. I've been in the band. I was 12 and a half when I joined. So I don't know how many years that is, uh, 27 years now. Yeah, I, I didn't know that you and Tribum hit 99 until like, uh, let's pass. Oh, what? He hit 99. Yeah.

So Trivium is technically a 90s band. Yeah, I guess so. Holy shit. Yeah. And I was just reminiscing and then. What an honor, dude. That obsolete flag. I had that exact same flag.

I had the slip knot shirt. Um, I used to hide my headphones underneath my hair to listen that first job when it came out. Yeah. Like under my. long, poofy lines, man, I would sit there in eighth grade, seventh grade even, or maybe eighth and ninth, and listening that self-titles if not record. And I got to tell them that story, which was really, I love being able to tell my favorite bands. I love them. I know it makes a lot of them squeamish, but I feel like it's so important to tell them because I just want them to know. Yeah. I'm still

trying to deal with like, what is the appropriate way to approach them? Is it like, do you just get out of the way? Hey, I love your band and you. Okay, now let's be friends or do you kind of keep it inside and the act cool. Man, you know, I still, I still don't know. I wish, I'm not sure the order, but like, you know, with Lexi Bodom, with Alexi from Bodom and like rest and power, like, we toured with them in 06. It was Children of Bodom, Trivium, Ammon Amontamarth opening. And this was in North America.

Oh my goodness. And man, speaking of like crazy past, I mean, there was the first time we were played San Francisco. Because of stage space, they made Amon-A-Marth drummer play on our drum kit. So the crowd was already bummed about that because, you know, we were a bunch of dudes with eyeliner and girls' pants playing for these incredible metal bands that I grew up listening to. Because basically before Trivium kind of started becoming public, I had super long hair, the giant XL cut off camo white shorts, giant boots, combat boots and like an XL like Cryptopsy shirt.

But then right when we started getting it, when I started getting a metal core, I was like, oh, these guys wear tighter clothes. I'm going to do that. So basically we showed up like that. So our entire set in San Francisco, the first time I played there, we were being spit on and boot at, but we played the entire set. Because again, it was Bodom, Trivium, Amon of Marth. Yeah, spit on the entire stuff from the crowd.

They're booing us the entire time. We got through it anyway. But back to Bodom, I didn't tell Alexi until the end of the tour. Like, dude, I grew up worshipping your band. I have every single of your records on vinyl. He had no idea. He was like, what? He's like, I didn't know this the whole tour.

Why didn't you tell me this earlier? Yeah, see, what do you? Yeah. And so I'm glad I told him that because now, unfortunately, that he's not a part of this world anymore. I'm so happy I was able to tell him. Same thing. Like, we were just in, I flew in from Gothenburg yesterday. We got to go to In Flames's Festival and I've been friends with those guys since 05.

First time we toured together was Oz Vesto 5. And with them, we did a tour with them, two tours with them until I started telling them I was a fan of them. But I remember I would tell like Bjorn and they would always kind of cringe a little bit. I was like, because they're so polite and so humble. Like, man, I wouldn't be here without you. But still, 20 years later, I'm still telling them that. And now they're like, okay, it's fine. And I started telling some trivia stuff.

And the first time I ever heard in Flames was on Napster. I was like 14 or 15. and then someone sent me Yotun. Evil Napster. Yeah, they sent me Napster, but that was my tape treating. That was how I discovered, because I was only in Metallica

through Slayer at that point, the gateway metal bands. Someone sent me Yotan, and I was like, I've never heard anything like this. So what I would do is I would download Full and Flames records on Napster, burn them on CDR,

but I would go to my local Barnes & Noble special order the CD, which would be like $25 because they had to get it from like New York or something. When that showed up, I would destroy the CDR and throw it away. And I told Anders that story in a co-interview.

He's like, man, that's so cool. So I think it's important to tell people we love them, even if they're sometimes because they're so humble or they're so down to earth that it might be a little bit much, but I think it's important. I just don't know the order yet. Yeah. I'm 21-year friendship with those guys. I'm still telling them shit they didn't know. Yeah. How do you know?

I'm 40. 40. 40, yeah. Where to CMH? That's awesome. Wow. Yeah. For some reason, I thought, okay, he's probably early 40s, probably 42, 43, 40.

40, yes. Okay. But my Dexascans tests, which I'm very happy about, says I'm biologically, 27. Are you serious? Yeah, yeah. What's that test? So Dexoscan, it, it, it checks all your body fat, your bone density, your muscle mass and everything. Okay. Because I've just recently wanted to really get, I've always been into fitness, but I've really wanted to get into it lately. So I've had some friends who've had health stuff or people who've kind of, I've seen them gone down different roads with like different substances, I've, you know, family sickness and stuff

like that. So I'm like, I really want to invest in my future for my kids. Yeah. I want to make it where I'm like 60, 70, 80, I can still do jiu-jitsu with my kids and still play with my kids. That was really the inspiration, just to be able to like, pick up my kids. pick up my kids and throw them around even when I'm older. Like I don't want to be a health, a health burden to them when I'm older. Yeah, I have the same goal. Like,

I want to be doing something when I'm 80. I want, I want with the brain to be that I want to be, if I have kids, I want to be able to still do. Absolutely. It's so important. And,

you know, every time I do like a cameo or I meet a fan who's like, hey, can give me some inspiration or something? Like just eat right, sleep, right, exercise, right? Take care of your mind because you have to take care of the mind first or the body,

and then the body will follow. Totally. Has Trivium, I mean, because your band has gotten through a lot of shit. And we, and you were just. Mountains of it. Yeah, mountains of it.

And you were, so is, are you in trivia at the point where now bands are coming up and tripping out meet, meeting you? It's amazing. Is that at that point yet? It is the greatest song in the world. It kind of started around 2012 where finally bands started telling us they were fans. Because before that, yeah, it was just everything from, I remember where we did. Did they, wait, did they do it in private or were they saying it publicly yet? Never publicly.

And still to this day, it's not publicly. There'll be big bands that are like someone in a really big band. Like, hey, you were the first band I saw. I was like, why haven't you said this live? And they never will say our name. Yeah. Why? I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. Maybe it's from, because when I was 18, I served in the next Metallica, I don't know what it is. Maybe because maybe because like deep in there's unconscious, like, it's not, maybe to them, it's not cool to say, I love, I love trivia. Yeah. Yeah, but why is that? Because they'll do with other bands. They'll do with other bands.

Like bigger bands than us, smaller bands. I don't know. Trivium always got like the shaft. We always had a curse. And then we were telling Rudy, our new drummer, about this, like, dude, there's a trivium curse. Like, we've always had little things that'll just happen. Dude, I remember when we did. The Tribium curse.

Dude, the tour, incredible bills, 2006 or 2007. Lamb of God, Trivian Direct Support, Machine Head Gojira opening, which is mind-blowing to think of Gojira first to four. But I remember some of those shows who came off stage and there was like a group of people outside by our bus. the guy's like nice show James I was like what he's like James Hetfield I was like what I was like he's like yeah fuck you it's like that kind of

stuff people would come up to us in person to do this or we'd have people yeah like I remember even again rest in power Brent Brent throwing a bottle of piss at us on Osfest 05 he hit us with his own piss in 05 I thought that was just

a legend no but again years later we made up and he like sang me a song in our dressing room They rode like on acoustic and like oh that's cool but we went through the fucking ringer man I remember we did a co-headliner with Slayer the original lineup of Slayer like I'm talking hanuman era Slayer it was trivium and slayer Macedon Amonamarth opening in the UK and we went out in Manchester so where we blew up in the UK at ascendancy crusade came out I think we're on our shogun album but even in the country that loved us at that point being on co-o-aslayer in Manchester I was like how's everyone doing and I hear like a 50% boo and 50% yeah yeah I was like everybody that loves us make some noise after crap everybody that fucking hates us make some noise the other 50% did it oh yeah i was like ha i even got you to do something by the end of the set everyone's into it but yeah we went through the ringer man torn with made in o six still at a time where you get bottled on

stage but now it's like everyone's cool with everything which i think is great i'm not saying i want people to have to go through that but it was just a different path for us yeah or even being bullied by our favorite bands bullied by our favorite fans fans that kind of stuff or getting yelled at by other bands and we'd be like um we support i'm not gonna maybe my memoir that I'm not going to write. I'll talk about it someday. But we're supporting one of our favorite fans. I remember I sound checked with their riff.

And their guitar tech was like, why the fuck did you do that? And this is when guitar texts used to yell at the opening band. And this doesn't happen anymore at all. So, yeah, it's, again, I'm not saying these to wish this upon, like I wish the younger bands had to do this now, but it was just a different time. It was almost that 80s BS that we read about

through old, like, Slarium Metallica quotes, but it was still residual in, like, the early 2000s. Do you think that probably influenced, like, the early trivium, like, bravado. I didn't really think about that until I started talking like no one really put themselves in your shoes. If you're coming up,

a bunch of people are talking show and you're like, fuck this shit out, I'm gonna stand up. I mean, it was tough. It was really hard. I remember doing download 05. That's been like hailed as the tripeium show that changed our career.

And afterwards, you know, I'm like 18. I'm going up some of my favorite bands. Like, oh man, we had this big set in these bands. They probably thought it was bragging,

but I wasn't. I was just so excited. Yeah. But it was really cool. I retold this story because we just play with them in Europe. I got to meet Jacoby Shattuckettix for the first time from Papa Roach. I was like, hey, man, I've been a big fan of you for years. And he's like, you know, I know what you guys been going through because he saw me talking about it.

Or I don't know how he knew. Maybe I just brought it up. He's like, you know, F the haters. Don't listen to them. This stuff's always going to happen. You guys are great. Stick to your guns. And I saw him again this last festival run.

I went up to him. I was like, dude, I just want to thank you again for that. The thing you said to me in 05 still sticks with me today. I think with that that tough beginning. Literally the only person that said anything positive about you and like your band is like Rob Flynn. That's like literally he was like the only dude he's been the ultimate man. I love Rob so much man. Dude Robb has always been like since day one. Rob Flynn. Sean Glass rest in power Sean love Sean glass so much and I love to talk about him a little bit. People don't know him. Everyone should look up Sean Glass. One of the greatest human beings we've ever met. But I met him around 04 and he's been supporting our band since then. He just passed away unfortunately. We're going to do hopefully we're putting together a charity show or not a charity slash rememberance show we'll do in January for him. but he was in broken hope.

He was in soil. He's just one of the best dudes in the world. Repentance. Corey's best friend. But yeah, Sean Glass, Jose Mangan, Rob Flynn. They basically were supporting us from like 0405, but that was it. But then we did things like we did Ozfest 05. I remember one of the last dates, we had all these people come with like,

hey, everybody, we're going to play that. And end of tour prank on Maiden, let's go egg them. We're like, what? Yeah, we're all going to egg Maiden. It's been put on. It's going to be great. We should go do that. I was like, we are not doing that.

And then it became that giant. drama that you saw. We refused to do it. I was there. Yeah. People were... Yeah. And the next show for the rest of Oz Fest, we all wore maiden shirts. We got a bunch of maiden flags from like a local hot topic, draped them over our cabs, and played the trooper every day. And after we did that, then all of a sudden we had like staff people that tour bullying us. I remember this guy, he'd like drive his golf cart, try to like cut

us off, shoot sand at us. He went against the festival. Yes. Because we're like, we're not going to do this to our favorite band. But that got That's the Iron Maiden tour. Oh, yeah. They brought us out for six weeks in Europe. Oh, they treat us like kings. And still to this day, we had a day off in Spain. And I booked this awesome restaurant at research.

We're sitting there. And then I'm like, oh, that's Bruce coming in. And Bruce comes, hey, guys big hugs. And so we're still pals with them. So the guys that know, they know. But as the years have gone on, so I was saying like around 2012 to go all the way back in circle, yes, around that point, people started telling us like, hey, I love your band. But then a couple bands have been like Austin Dickinson.

He's been like a little brother to me. Um, he's always talked about how traving was like one of his first favorite bands, uh, three from Sleep Token. Hasn't said it publicly, but he said that, you know, a sentence was the first album he ever got in metal. He played with it bloodstock. So just the real ones are starting to come around. Ishaun, he respects us and loves us, Narragal. Like, we've got the right dudes, but I think, I mean, you're in a band with him. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's cool. And you named a band after a, it's a, uh, a yoga pose, correct? It's a corpse, uh, course pose. Yeah, so originally I was going to call the album Ritsu, which is from Ashtanga Yoga, and it's about life and death and the whole idea, like visually, if you picture the Oroboras. And I was going to call a lead single Shaba, Shavasana of corpse, host.

And I was talking to Ishaan, this was, shoot, the Ibaraki record. I worked on for a decade before it came out. And I was talking to him, I was like, I wish I could write about your Magandir and all the great Viking mythology and stuff. He's like, Matt, that's been done. He's like, write about your Japanese culture. And I was like, wow, I can do the same thing that Thyrfing and Amonamarth can do about... When was this again? I'm sorry.

This might have been, I can't recall when this record came out. I-B-A-R-A-K-I. Thank you. Man, this is great. Yeah, of course. Let's see, when did Ibracchi come out? Came out in 2022. So for the decade leading up, I was writing this record. I've always loved black metal.

But this record ended up becoming, I don't want to call it post-black metal because it's not like shoo-gays stuff. But it just became its own thing. But Ishaan was the producer, co-writer on this record, and Gerard Way guessed it on one of the singles as well, which is super cool. He did like black metal vocals on it. Now he's on the new Frozen Soul, which is sick. But that record is actually chronologically in order of the first track I wrote 10 years before the record came out. The last one was like a month before it came out.

So it was like a time capsule. But I got to have Narragal on it with me. Yeah, it was a decade of writing that record. So it was just taking its time. But he inspired me to go into my Japanese culture. So every single thing is about a different Japanese. story. Like Susano no Mikoto is about the story that's my back piece. It's about the thunder god of Japan, of the storm god, excuse me, Susano. He was cast down from the heavens to live on earth.

And one day he meets this, this sad fisherman. And the fisherman says, there's this snake that this eight-headed serpent in the sea who's been eating all my daughters. I have one daughter left. I don't want to do. And he's like, can you please help me? He's like, I'll help you if you marry her off to me. So the gods are always these kind of flawed things, just like a Greek mythology. And so he goes, goes off and he makes these eight giant tubs of sake and feeds each head so they keep getting drunk. And then he cuts the, he cuts the eight-headed serpent open. There it is right there. And then he gets this, this legendary sword.

So it's songs like that. I was like, oh, I could finally do the idea of what Viking metal would do, but do it for my own culture, my Japanese culture. So it's really fun to do that. So that's what that record was. And Ishaun was the main advisor behind it. He did all the Japanese instruments, like programmed them on there. Oh, wow.

Yeah, it's really cool. And they have Gerard do black metal. vocals for the first time ever, ever was cool. I had all of Ishaan's families on that song with Gerard. Yeah, it's really cool. Nargal did all the vocals on Akumu, but actually in Polish. I was like, Hey, Nergal, can you sing this in Polish? Because he'll sound really demonic and he did. It's fucking awesome. But that record, it's one, it was more for the self. It wasn't one that like we overly promoted or overly publicized, but that's, that's samurai suit that I have. Um, I did the videos in a samurai suit. It's, it's really cool. It was just this, this project I felt like I had to do to get

in touch with myself because I've always felt I wasn't Asian, I wasn't Japanese enough for the Asian kids in middle school and high school because I'm half. I wasn't white enough for the white kids. So it's always stuck between these two plays. But it's the same thing as Trivium. We've never been metal enough for the metal kids and never been hardcore enough for the hardcore kids because we kind of this metal core thing going on in our blood and we were never enough for either. So this was a way I could get in touch with myself. And this was around, I remember I started writing these lyrics around COVID times where there's a lot of anti-Asian sentiment. People were very racist against all Asians because yeah, because yeah, it's crazy. I don't mean to bring that stuff up, that time period up. But it just remember, I just was reminded of that when I saw this. So it was a lot of like getting in touch with myself and kind of learning more about myself and wanted to be like, okay, this is just who I am. I'm 50-50 or I'm half-half. And it's, it was a therapeutic process or cathartic to get this record.

With this record, did you bring it into Trivium? I mean, I should lean into my Japanese culture. Luckily, we have a little bit over the years, the Crusader. we have a song called Becoming the Dragon, which is the story of the Japanese dragon, starts as a coy fish that has to swim up this waterfall. And once the, once the coyfish gets the top called Dragon's Gate, it comes down and becomes a dragon. Okay.

So we have that song Becoming the Dragon. Our fourth record, Shogun, which is one that's, we've got a lot of, uh, our fans would always say between ascendency, in waves and Shogun and now Sin. It's like four different classes of Tribune fans. They each one says, no, Shogun's the best. Not in waves. No, in waves is the best. They kind of are conflicted over that.

But that record dealt heavily with Japanese mythology. Kiti Stiglman, I remember I learned that phrase. It's what samurai would say. If you pissed a samurai off legally, they can cut your head off. Kiti Stiglman means sorry, but I have to take your head. So they just, Kiti Sikkiman, cut your head off and they're legally protected. Okay. So that's what that was about.

Shogun is a song that I wrote like a story of this like, this warrior. But we also delved a lot in a Greek mythology on that. Scylla and Carbdis, Hew Spawn the Furies is about Kronos. Prometheus and the crucifix being about Prometheus. So when the Odyssey was about to come, I was like, fuck, I wish we could get these songs in that movie. Impossible. Impossible to make that happen. But we played in Greece and for the first time in 21 years and I talked about, hey, we've written so many songs about your culture and your country and your mythology. That's cool.

Yeah. How did you guys come up with down from the sky? It was because it's like a big ring out and then like just. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. A big rip. How did that song start?

That was a. So every song. before before the last couple yeah yeah we'd have a it'd either be Corey Paulo or myself would come up

with the riffs and Paulo actually came with the majority of the wrist for that song and he brought it to us like this is a game changer this is really cool lyrically I wrote it about

kind of dictatorship over any country any place a bad power that can have corruption over people and lead people and lead people astray.

That's a topic I'd like to delve into a lot, but that's what the old war footage was. Yeah, about a lethal grip of a bad leader who can threaten by weapons over people. That can be applied anywhere. I like the application of or lyrically, it could be something specific and exact to me, but someone who listens to it can put that to maybe their own country

or their own life or their own household or their own job or their own boss. I think that's so important. But down from the sky, yeah, I'm trying to think of who wrote which person? Does it kind of... Did you guys get in a room? I just do a ring out.

I think Paulo fully came up with that intro back when we'd write music and show each other beforehand, which I know is the main way. But the last several records, and especially the newest one, we wrote it only when the four of us are together at our headquarters in the hangar. That was the rule. We can only write together. No demos back and forth. No MIDI set up.

Nothing's written beforehand to send each other. If you have a riff, I don't want to hear it until you show up in the room. So we always wrote as a hive mind, the four of us together in the place that we were we built by hand. How did it, how did it feel when like, I mean, I assume like, okay, this fucking do a count and ring out and like, and then you're, and then you're playing that. You, you, you, you are core. Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, do.

Corey plays it live. It's, it's ready to go. Oh, please. Yeah. Should. Oh, man, I might, I might butcher it. Yeah, please. It's my, my favorite part.

My part. That, da, da, da, da, da, da. I think, uh, Corey plays it live. So I haven't played this since. I might have come up with the part, but I haven't played it since, oh, 8.

Oh, that's so simple. Oh, shit. There it is. Shit. There it is. But yeah, Corey plays a lot out, so I forgot it. But I think I came up with it hand to Corey.

Yeah, that's it. That's it, huh? Yeah, I think Paul came with the verse. And then I think Paul came with this part. It's all these cool chords I think you don't really notice the forest. I think I came with the middle. The, um...

Dude. Polokane with the elephant riff, the, uh... Elphant riff? An elephant riff. That is an elephant riff. But anytime you hear a cool band like that, that's Apollo riff. So, like, in waves. Oops, sorry.

When there's a bend like that, You kind of know it's Apollo riff. If you hear something that's kind of Swedish or something that's kind of galloped, it's usually me. If there's a shitload of downpicking, it's usually Corey. Okay.

That kind of stuff. I might have to sit low forward. There we go. Do you remember recording that record? What did she use, like, guitar-wise, amp-wise? that one we record with Nick Resclinix Yeah

Awesome producer I remember when I saw that I was I was jealous Yeah It's like he went to Nick Amazing amazing amazing amazing Yeah exactly There's always some reason to say fuck trivia

I should just make a shirt That she says fuck trivia But did that that might sell dude Actually that reminds me of another fun story You're gonna like then we'll jump back to Shogun So What year was it There was a year

Um Where we had this band out And I had this crummy tour manager As bands have had Sometimes you don't know When your crew guy sucks Especially when you're young and you finally have a budget to have a tour manager. Yeah.

The opening band was there and about to grab some food. And tour manager went up and said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, nobody eats till Matt Hafei eats. You've heard that. The rumor, yeah. Yes, yes. That spread absolutely everywhere in the world. So when people are kind of like, I think these guys might be dicks because they're calling themselves Metallica, then you hear nobody eats till Matt Hafei eats. So it all makes sense.

Meanwhile, I've always been kind of just the nice, goofy guy that I am today who just likes video game and video games and anime. And, but that spread everywhere. So for years, I kept hearing that. I was like, man, that sucks. And then years later, when people started realizing, okay, maybe these guys aren't so bad. Like, I think it's because we had a couple lineups and they're like, all, right, maybe I had a bad experience with one of the guys in the band. Maybe they're all like this.

Finally, we got our lineup cleared up at the time. I decided to make a t-shirt out of it. So I made a t-shirt, nobody eats till Matt Hafei eats on my Twitch store. And it did very, very well. Oh, it did very well. But yeah, so back to Shogun. So we decided to record with Nick Ross Clinic. It was really cool. At that point, our first album, our demo was done by Jason Sukoff,

A Sentency Jason Sukoff, Crusade Jason Sukoff. Shogun, we wanted to work with someone different. Someone were a big fan of, and we loved his footh fighters work, loved his rush work. Of course. What's great about him is he came up and he's like, all right, you guys ready to do this, let's hear you play. And he's like, you guys aren't ready. I'm going to come back again. You guys rehearse and write a little more. This isn't, this isn't there yet, which was really cool. We've never had anybody tell us to do that before. So he left and we worked hard again. He came back. He's like, now you guys are ready. So we recorded in a real studio, which is the the first time. Jason has a real studio at the time that was like his home converted room. We went to a place called the Sound Kitchen. While we were there, Miley Cyrus was recording, Leonard Skinner was recording, Kenny Chesney, Trace Adkins.

We're the first metal band that had ever been there. There was like catering. There was catering at the studio. Super expensive to be at the studio, but like, hey, let's do this because we haven't really been in a studio like that since. Made the record there. It took a while. What was that tone? Nick had this, I think he split, he took our guitar, split it in like three different heads through each one had its own pedal an overdrive pedal each one was its own head each one was his own cab and then multiple mics so that was the tone on that record

what were the heads it's typically always been some form of 50150 I took notes because Corey had Corey just remembers every head we've ever used for every record yeah it's always been some form of whether a 5150 1, 2 block letter 05 05 plus 34 51 53 it's basically every school of which we've had

that record darn was it let's see if it's in there Yeah. All the tape was to keep the stuff clean. Dude, do you still had that dean? I don't. No. Because there was a point where, and actually I haven't talked about this too much in a while,

stretching strings just to go over this morning. I had to sell a lot of my guitars to pay rent at a point. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was like 0-607. So like bands, it really does go all up and down. Even at Shogun, you're still at that point where we're still trying to build this thing. Yeah. And we've had to rebuild multiple times.

And there have been multiple times where it's like, all right, this thing's almost done. things almost done. Like recently, that almost happened again. But now, like, the course is corrected. Being in a band's tough. You know that. It is tough. I know that. So, yeah, at that point, I had to sell some guitars.

Luckily, I didn't have to sell too many of my Gibson or anything. Oh, yeah, there's Nick. There's Nick's Gold Top. I loved that guitar so much. Damn, I haven't seen this at a long time. My record was super fun. That was the first time that we really layered the hell out of everything, because Nick had so many cool ideas of overdub guitars that only happened on one part.

That's something we weren't used to because we're used to always quadrack. tracking everything. So it'd be two identical parts in left, two identical parts in the right. Of course, the harmonies you've built into everything. Leeds and melodies kind of split in the middle. But this one, he would be like, okay, no, let's have an extra chug happen here or an extra vocal thing happen here. Man, look at young Corey. Corey looks the exact same. Cori has always looked the exact same. I have had every look in the world. Like, this is when I have my dorky Roy Orbison glasses with the long, poofy hair. Shogun was awesome, man. Because a sentencing came out in North America.

And nothing really happened. Like people still weren't really into it. It didn't really click. But in the UK, it all clicked for some reason. I remember we showed up to the UK. We were used to, I think we, we actually just left a tour. All the bands, we weren't getting along with them on this run. So we're like, you know what, fuck the last show.

So we actually didn't even show up to the last show, which is kind of crazy that we did that. And then we flew to the UK and the press person from the UK Kirsten, who are still with to the stage, still does all her press. She said she flew to Seattle for that show because I remember I was underage. So they're like, yeah, once you're doing with your set, you can't be. in this venue. And we were clashing heads of the other bands. Like, you know what? Fuck this. So we left. Didn't even play. And she's like, man, these guys are going to be dicks. What's going to happen? We flew over. And she's like, oh, they're actually lovely. But the first show, we didn't expect anyone know who we were. Because we're used to just no one were fans of the band yet. And we're

backstage and we hear this, this noise. Like, what the hell is that? We're first to three for that run. The whole crowd was chanting trivium. Like, there's no way. Went out there. They knew every single word to every single song. No word else in the world. Did anyone know anything of ours? We were supposed to play like the fifth stage. at download on I think this might have been the end of this run and we got a call like no we're bumping up to the main stage opening slot we did that 11 a.m. slot 40,000 people came running up the hill right at 11 a.m. knew every single word and that really changed our lives in the UK but nowhere else did it really click yet. So then for some reason maybe because I was like a rebellious teenager

I said for this next record let's do the exact opposite every single thing that happened to sentencing let's do the opposite and prove to everyone that said that we're not metal that we are You know what? I was I was jamming that record today. It's a how do you I was I was trying like to describe the word in my own head. I'm like it's different it's like a sentence or crusade. Crusade. It kind of felt like foresting like a way like you're kind of like something there's some kind of disconnect but maybe that was just my outsider. No no I mean it was it was a weird constraint to set because like maybe we should have just made something that sound like a sentencing again especially because a sentence you went gold like immediately.

in a time where it was like almost the end of CD sales. Yeah. But I think I was still 18, 19, I was still so obsessed with like, well, why is everyone calling us not metal? Why are people calling this album that has like Sound of Perseverance style chugging on it, calling it an emo record? And it really went down to the way we looked. Because again, before ascended, if people look up before Embertoin front on the blue

demo, I looked like I was in, I had the white combat pants before Sabaton did. And I was like, well, we looked super, super metal here. I just wanted to prove to the people that didn't. believe that no, we know melodic death metal better than anyone. We know extreme metal. We are versed in black metal and death metal and melodic death metal. We love these things. It's just that we look different. And people couldn't handle that because we had the exact look at the time, the straightened hair, the eyeliner, the Dickie's girl pants because they didn't make tight enough pants for dudes at the time. See, there it is. That's before, before Ember. Excuse me. Yeah, yeah, right before Ember.

The Sabotone uniform. So Crusade, I said, let's have no screaming. Nothing that resembles a breakdown. Let's go back to standard tuning. Let's make a record that sounds like it could have came on the 80s. That's what it was. Like something that felt like is forced. Yeah, it was like it was forcing ourselves. It was a constraint to not use anything from the previous record.

And more more a rumor is like I heard that a not one time was more than one of you in the studio. Yeah. That was one of those dark points I was talking about where all of a sudden we weren't getting along. Actually during a sentencing, even during the UK, I remember we were doing two nights sold out in London. At the story? Yeah. And you guys were fighting after it. Yeah, you got it. Yeah. Yeah. So we just had a, it was either the first night or the

second night. I can't remember. But the performance was, there was an aspect of the performance. It was absolutely terrible. Like one, one, one member. One, one, like, micro or one member. It was, it was really big. It was really bad. It was bad. The material wasn't sound like it was sounding. I'm sure that you could see it on here, even. And we were all backstage and screaming at each other. We're like, this was fucking terrible. What kind of bullshit is?

This is so unacceptable throwing stuff. And right outside the door, the tiny little dress room door was our management, our label. They all had these gold records to present to us. And then sort of our manager, Justin, who's still our manager this day, I've known him. He's been managing us. So he's like, guys, we've got to give you this award real quick. So we'll smile real quick for the photos. They left.

We went right back to fight. So sometimes the stuff that's happening behind closed doors. We don't want it. I mean, no one wants to change a relationship, a job, a marriage, all these things. they don't want to do this. Paula brought up a great point the other day. He's like, we haven't wanted to teach rain to a new drummer seven times in our career. He's like that's not fun to have to teach the same song seven times to seven different people

in the hopes that it's going to sound like it's supposed to sound on the record. So, yeah, that was a point where none of us were really speaking. We're budding heads with Jason, budding hands with the band, all four of us. And sometimes the chemistry, you know, I hope that everyone that has ever played with us is doing well in life. I hope they've found something awesome. I mean, look at Matt Madero, the drummer who played Silent Snow. He's kicking ass in from Ashtonu. He's exactly where he wants to be.

And that's all I ever want for anyone. Sometimes the chemistry between a band, the four people in the room, just doesn't work. And it wasn't working on the crusade. So, yeah, there's all these weird circumstances. We're doing well in the UK. We were told, all right, as soon as you guys get home, you have two weeks to finish writing, six weeks in studio, you're back on tour. We should have given, they should have been given some time. Yeah.

But I will say that all that stuff led us up to the, thing that we're holding now, which I think it wouldn't lead us to, I don't even think we would have made what's to be crowned in the grave. I don't think that would have been after a sentence. I feel like we had to go. Records one through seven all sound like a different, like, I don't want to say different band, but they're all different styles. Like all seven are different. Like the Crusade was kind of like a thrash record with a couple kind of, you know, anthem and the rising are kind of more like, they're, they're staying a little bit more. They're not thrashy like the others.

What's the song on that record? What's like the hit? The hit, there were a couple. So Anthem is actually a big song now, but it almost has this like early motley crew slash killem all vibe. Okay. Which is really strange,

but that was a really big single. And if we play that today, and we will bring it back to the set. I think of Duke Great. Yeah, the Crusade is an instrumental nine-minute song, which just gets very dream theater techie. Like, I'm playing in 11 and 13 and 7 and 5. Like, that's really cool.

But no one really ever looked at that and went, now when people talk about weird times, it's like, oh, this is so exciting. But we had all that there. There are a couple songs on there that really nailed it and a couple songs that we really didn't. And if I look at our entire catalog, I'm very proud of everything we've ever done. But there are certain records that I feel like weren't fully realized because we set too much, either too much of a constraint.

But one of the things that led to the issues that I have with a couple songs on Crusade, Silence and Snow, Vengeance Falls, that we didn't do vocal pre-production or in a room together, jamming as a band, making sure I can play and sing every single thing that's going to happen on the record. Like some bands may be like that's very obvious. Of course you do that, but some bands don't. I remember there was a point where as a singer, I'd be like, oh, I'll get in shape vocally a week or two before the tour. And that's probably what most, I don't want to say most singers,

maybe half the singers do. But now I treat it like an athlete would, like a soccer player, like a, like a martial artist. I already did my full same tour warm up this morning at 7.30 a.m. It's like I do this every day, five days a week. Still Monday through Friday. I'm still on Twitch like performing, taking requests. making sure everything's always in shape, but I wasn't doing it at those points.

So that's why there's things like contemporary's contamination. The riffs are very like complicated, kind of Nevermore-esque. I didn't really try to play and sing them. Lyrically, this record is very cool. And I think it was overlooked that it's very sociopolitical. It deals with like issues of racism in the world. It deals with war. It deals with all these things.

But it was kind of overlooked because we went into this such a different style, I suppose. And then Shogun is where we brought it back. And people like, holy shit, Trivium's back. They're more tech than ever. There's death metal in Prague in this. They have long hair again. And then, of course, Shogun did very well in certain places. And every record we've had is done well somewhere else.

A sentence you blew up in the UK, crusade. We started getting her foot in the door in Europe. Shogun was an Australian record. He blew up in Australia. And then we did the exact opposite. I cut my hair. We dropped the seven strings. We made everything more simple.

We decided to do no color in our videos, no performance in our videos, make movie-style videos. And that was in waves. So in waves, all this said, I cut my hair again. We presented this a lot more like an art. piece. One of my best friends who's an incredible photographer, videographer in LA now. He lived in Florida. His name is John Paul Douglas. He's been one of the close art advisors of the band, same thing with my wife. He helped us discover this style. And this time around, I already had the musical backbone of all this stuff. I liked, but he started showing me cool indie rock bands and cool directors like Lars von Trier, Christopher Nolan, Nicholas Windig Refin. I started to become very influenced by film. As you could see the NWaves video, again, what's the opposite of everything we could have done? A music video with no performance. We don't perform at all.

Let's do what's the opposite of a band? Just in general, let's have no color. Let's have costumes made from Ashley's friend who went to art school with her. That's why you guys did this. And this is very antichrist, very Lars von Trier, these like scary images of nature that John Paul came up with. So again, we did the opposite of something successful, but this was also very successful.

Right when this came out, this became Germany's ascendancy. Came on, did Vakken, open up with in waves, finally German like this and blew up in Germany. And then we did that. the opposite again after this. Then we did Vengeance Falls, which was kind of the opposite of this. Then we did the opposite again, silenceless snow. We're like,

hey, let's take it even further than the crusade went and go backwards. What did our hero of thrash bands like? Let's tag, let's get more into like Rainbow and Dio and do more of that. And this was a time where I thought I lost my voice, so I didn't scream, thought I couldn't scream. That's a whole other fucking thing to open up that all these different points in my life were quit screaming because I thought it was destroying my voice. Yeah, Venice Falls to you, you thought you blew out your

your voice. That was on that tour cycle. So we did Rockin' the Range. We played in Canada, had a border crossing, and then played Rock in the Range. And I remember from the first screen, the first go, I was like, oh, my voice is done. I got through the set, told the guys, I'm like, I'm toast. I flew home, canceled the rest of the tour, sent everybody home. And that'll lead us to, I don't know if we want to add this, this note for a little further in.

I started training very extensive with an amazing vocal coach, Ron Anderson, And which was really cool was I you you train with Ron? Yeah, yeah, for like 10 years. So when I blew my voice that left home, it was like obviously became like a social media post and I got like top to top. Yeah, I got a text from Matt from Avenged. He's like, hey, I heard you blew your voice out and started to hear that anything can do to help. It's like, yeah, what did you do? So you got me in touch with Ron.

So I started training religiously with Ron. But the next 10 years, I sang and screamed very safe. This is very different style, quieter, sustainable. And then around the time when this ascendancy anniversary tour started coming up, Paolo, Justin, and my wife Ashley all said it kind of different points, not even have speaking to each other. Like, Matt, you have to bring the ascendancy style back. You can't do this safe, quiet thing. I was like, what, that's not possible.

And that was for sin, correct? This would have been for the ascendancy touring cycle. So still on sin, dead men and dragon, I was doing this safe thing. It's like a decade of doing this safer thing. But we'll get there in a minute because that's important. That's about the mental breakdown, the physical breakdown. But I want to hear about your breakdown. Yes.

Yes. Yeah, please, please. But it's interesting. If I look at the discography itself, it's like truly ember through silence were all trivium, but different styles of trivium. Like they're not similar at all. Yeah. Maybe the closest to, if I look at that right now, would be ember and ascendancy. You're probably the closest-ish.

But ember to inferno is when I just classic metal greats, but then I got into melodic death metal by wave in flames and flames at the gay star. tranquility. And the thing that rounded up the sound was getting into German metalcore. I got into Heaven Show Burn through German Metal Core. I never was into hardcore metalcore before that, but it started really blowing up in Central Florida around the time. So I got into metalcore by way of Heaven Shelburne, Caliban, cataract from Switzerland. Then I went to the American scene. Hey, breed perseverance. I saw them open up or play with Slayer. And it really started changing everything, getting into poison the well, converged Jane Doe. And that's why you can actually hear on some of the, although this record is an E standard on the six string, I started playing. I started playing.

around with things that like converge you breakdown and like if I could collapse the masses. So it's this really strange mix of like being into traditional metal. You or guys were really trying to find what you're about. Yeah. And I feel like this record was so ahead of its time. Like if I look at this 2003 album, some of the bands are coming out right now are kind of playing this sound. That's why I actually earlier. Is it coming back around yet? It really is like like stuff like so cool. You can just play. Stuff like if I cut flouse masses.

That kind of stuff, you know, that would have been back then. I think I wrote that when I was like 15 or 16. Stuff like Ember. That kind of stuff was very influenced by both melodic death metal, thrash, and then it started getting into hardcore stuff. like that riffles talking about that convergy influence the new strings but yeah so it's like all over the place and then different records that different styles different genres who recorded this record jason sukhov and that record sounds really good too it's a good sounding record but we're a three

piece of the time i'm actually wearing a convert shirt right there Oh yeah, you were a three piece at some point Yeah, we're a three piece then Okay Yeah, so when the band first started I played my eighth grade talent show I played no leaf clover by Metallica Which is such a sick riff

Let's do it Dude like I can't believe they never made a studio version Something like that Something like that Something like that So I played my eighth grade talent show It was me and a drummer We thought our band

I think we're settling on the name The Vertigo Oh my God. It's terrible. Yeah, it is terrible. Because the year before that, fuck, sorry. I'm going all over the place.

This is the proof of my ADHD. I'm in, dude, please. So I first picked up guitar on 11. My dad always had guitars around the house. There's a picture of me at like three months old with a Steinberger headless. I was just on my lap. I wasn't playing it, obviously. But my dad played as a hobby player.

And I picked up guitar because it was like the cool thing to do. In Central Florida, all there was was like boy bands and pop punk. So I was really into pop punk and Scott. first. My first favorite bands were like less than Jake. Blink 182. Duky had just come out. And I tried out for my friend's bands. I think their name was gonna be freshly squeezed. Florida, orange juice, okay. Skaw band. Got it. Um, and my tryout song was Dammit by Blank 1282. And I thought I was, I thought I nailed it. I couldn't really play. I didn't get the callback. So I was like, you know what, screw this. I'm not gonna be in a band. I'm not gonna play guitar anymore.

And someone lent me the black gun by Metallica. It was a CD. And I remember, I think I copied it to like cassette from my boom box. And I would listen to it when my mom. mom dropped me off at school and her green RAV 4 and I was like wow this is the kind of music I think I'm meant to play so I'd lock myself my room and just play guitar until I can emulate these sounds and I heard on the black album that I started getting all the era the stuff that was around there I kind of went backwards with my Italica stuff went from black album to load and reload S&M Garage Incorporated Garage Incorporated is fucking incredible everyone should go back and listen to the newer album of that because it's got the old stuff and the new stuff it sounds so good

I feel like it's some of Hetfield's best recorded vocals that the guitar tones are nuts. The drum tones are nuts. And so S&M came out and I covered No Leave Clover in The Vertigo with my friend, Chris. He had like a sparkly green drum kit. We played on the cafeteria auditorium. After the set, my friend, she came up to me. She's like, hey, my brother's high school band is here. And they thought you're pretty good.

They want you try it for his band. And so I was in eighth grade. And these guys were all like 15, 16, 17. The original singer of our band The lineup was Brad A different mat on guitar Jared on bass and Travis on drums So I showed up

I think I was gonna sleep over At Travis's house that night I had like a I think I had like a purple dinosaur pillow I had like my guitar And they're all looking at me like What is this kid gonna be able to do? I mean it's a 12 and a half year old Walking in with a bunch of 16 year olds

Who all like you know One of them smoked cigarettes One of them had a tattoo One of them drove a car Is it hardcore. Yes. And I played for whom the belt holes with them perfectly. So the look went from one kind of look to another look.

And they're like, okay, you're in. So my first show with them was Lake Brantley High School Battle of Bands in 2000. I saw the flyer. We've got the flyer in the hangar. And we opened up with Sick by Slipknot, actually. So we covered Sick. I wasn't the singer yet. Brad was the singer.

He opened him with Sick by Slipknot, played from whom the belt holes. One of the original songs that we wrote, Thrust was in the set list. And that's on art. We re-released that. as well without Brad on it but the show went really well there was like mini little mosh pit thing within a couple months

we separated ways with Brad because he wanted the band to be like old school industrial industrial goth he wanted us to be like early Manson early skinny puppy nine inch nails ministry and me and Travis and Jared wanted to go with like Metallica Pantera sound we did I remember us covering we covered tornado

of souls in Travis's bedroom I actually told Dave Mustain about that I didn't get to show him yet I'd love to show him that but I couldn't saying hi, which is weird being a young kid. I can only say low. So this morning I made the call. Like it was like really low. And so lineup changes happened there. Eventually Jared left. We got Travis's friend Brent, Brent, rest in power as well. My goodness. Lots of friends were talking. Yeah, young, young guy. Really, really great dude. Um, so we were three piece for a while. We became kind of like a three piece death thrash band. I started getting a death really heavily

through sound of perseverance. Of course. Got an morbid angel through gateways, actually, then went backwards in domination really into black metal said everyone so you hear a couple minor chords and our stuff like by way of emperor emperor was actually big influence on us because every record was so different and that's why i was like oh they did it we could do this in our own way okay so after brent we were a three piece got our first tour ever in the world of the u.s actually fuck sorry before that we got an offer to play in europe we did three of our first european shows. We played in Eindhoven, Zolfel, Germany, and Ghent Belgium. Eindhoven, it was do-scented, trivium, and a band called Prostitute Disfigurement.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So we did that show. That show went well. We went to do Zolfeld in 2003 at Zolfeld Conspiracy Fest. It was headlined by Heaven Showburn. Darkest hour was in that show, a bunch of German bands. It's like 1,200 people. I'm like, I mean, this is pretty cool. And we drove like 12 hours to Ghent Belgium. It was my dad, me, Corey, Brent, we were a three-piece. And then Stefan and Benny. Benny is still Heaven Show Burns managers this day. And we drove to Ghent and when we played, there was like 20 people there. And I remember walking through the hallway to get in as like Port-a-Potties through the entryway.

Like not even port-it. Just journals on the entryway. I remember that very vividly. I was like, okay, this is kind of rough. And then we got our first tour off, right? I just, I graduated high school early. I said, I'm going to graduate early just in case this band thing takes off. So graduated midway through my senior year, if not maybe like early in the senior year to start college early.

I was doing like the first week of college. I was like, I don't know if I could do this. And then we got our first tour offer through Josh Klein and Tim Borer, who's still very good. I'm sure you know both. Yeah, yeah, yeah, love those guys so much. And they got us our first tour offer. And I asked my dad, like, what should I do?

We got a tour offer. He's like, well, school will always be there. You can always go back. You should go on tour. That tour was, God forbid, headlining, scars of tomorrow, and Trivium, all that remains co-flip-flopping the first and second slots in 2004. In 2004, April 04th. So that was our first tour ever of North America.

So we went on that, we've been on tour ever since. I don't know why I went over to that story, but it's cool to kind of go through everything. Please. Yeah, so it was me, Travis, me, Travis Brent, and we held tryouts locally around the time of Ember. Corey was a student from Maine at Folsel University,

which we've done two of our records there. He was from Dover, Pock, Maine. He tried it for our band, and we're, like, acting like there are a lot of people to try it out, but he was really the only guy that tried out. So we let him in. We did our free show at the Hard Rock Lab in Orlando, drew like 1600 people.

people. Oh my God, this is amazing. But as soon as we got signed, every time we played through, it'd be like 15, 17 people. We did the set in Orlando on the God forbid run.

There was like 50 people there during our set. So Orlando's weird. I feel like in New England, the bands that kind of take off and get signed, people really support it, at least from like an outsider

looking in. But I feel like Florida is a metal band because there weren't many. Once you get signed, it kind of like, they go away. And then you have to prove yourself and stick around.

It comes back up. We had the bass player of monstrosity briefly. We had a couple different bass player fill-ins and then Paulo who had a thrash band out of South Florida called Metal Militia. They were also three-piece.

He was the bass player frontman of his band. He did the Machine Headhead. Machine Head, Comerico Headline, Trivium opening tour. We had to do the whole tour. That was his tryout and he was in. So Corey's been in since 2003, Pollo 04, myself since 99. So that kind of gets the lineup stuff. Nice. Then how, wouldn't you guys

start really writing that first record? Because it really kind of really started. I mean, you wouldn't be here if it wasn't for those moments of when you write your first record there's nothing like it yeah it really isn't

I mean ember so we did this thing called the blue demo it got in the hands of yesper from In Flames and remember he sent a picture of him holding the blue demo that blew my mind

because I would not exist without In Flames jester race through a reroutes remain if I didn't get into all those records treatment would never have become what it did we wouldn't be signed

nothing would have happened but he passed that to his friend Frederick who did their website at the time our website he passed a Lifeforce records

Life Force signed us We're on Life First for those three small European shows. Monte Conner had heard, I think, if I could collapse the masses on a Samper CD, he emailed my dad, who was our manager from when I was like 12 and a half to maybe like my early 20s. And he's like, I think this band's great. They're not there yet. I'm curious to see where they are in a year. My dad said, okay, Monte Conner says this. You guys need to go write some new songs.

We're going to make a music video ourselves. We're going to fund all this between the three of you guys. I'm going to send this to Rotner to see what happens or the four of us before it was in the band. So we wrote, blinding tears will break the skies, the deceived and like, like to the flies. Actually, the flies video version that everyone sees is from the demo version that happened in between Amber and Ascendency. So we sent Monty, these three songs in the video, he's like, I'm going to sign you right now. So you got us out of our life force deal, sign us to order.

We're still signed a runner to this day with the longest standing rotuner signing ever. Longer than Slipknot, longer than nickel back, which is kind of insane. We're very happy there. I mean, we've had some staff changes here and there, but like I said, with the new record set up, it's been feeling very good. So yeah, this is the one we shot this with Dale Restagini in New Jersey and like an old kind of hotel looking castle thing. So you can see the eyeliner, the nice hair. But this kind of changed our lives.

There's Brent. They started everything, dude. Yeah, it was nuts. How was it like tracking those songs with Jason? Oh, it was great. But I remember we finished the entire record. And I came in one day, Jason's... You don't only talk about this record much.

A sentence? No, your first record. Amber. So Amber, we recorded Mix and Maths and Mass. All that in like 10 days. Of course, you have to. The budget, that's all we had. You have to.

It was self-financed. Yeah. Ember, ember's great, man. Again, Ember is so far ahead of its time. I love that record. But what's cool is now that we've got the hangar studio set up so well, we can revisit any of these songs anytime. We just did, redid fugue from our blue demo.

So I would have been 15, the Sabaton pants. Yeah. That picture. We redid that version with Rudy. Fully recorded, mixed mastered. I just saw the video of it. It's amazing. So we can start doing this.

Like, we can re-hit old songs. song instead of having to make a studio version, we can do a live version. So the blue demo I think we did in seven days. Ember was probably 12 to 14 days all in, got signed a roadrunner, did a sentency. It was kind of a blur. I think we did that one very quickly as well. But ascendancy was really where we stepped it up because I was

like, I love the way dead heart and a dead world sounds so much. Nevermore dead heart. Arch enemy wages of sin. Testimate the Gathering. I was like, who did these? He was a guy named Andy Sneep. Also did Kill Switch. So we got Andy to mix a sentency. What were those first songs you guys were writing? Yeah, blinding tears, deceived, and the likelihood of the flies. It was the first three we did on the demos and then redid them for, excuse me, for a sentency.

Okay. And a sentency to me, my biggest influences were all the stuff we talked about, the Metallica, Megada, Pantera Testament Slayer. Those were the big ones. Then I got in the Malik death metal scene, black metal scene, death metal scene, the German metal core scene, a little bit the American hardcore scene. But a couple of the big influence that people don't know about, that's why I was so. insist on proving everyone. No, we're metal and we know more about metal than you do was basically our attitude. I was varying to martyr warp zone. That's something you have to check out. Everyone in the world needs check out. Marr warps zone. M-A-R-T-Y-R warp zone. They're from French Canada. That record right there.

Okay. I remember Jason Sukoff said to me, he's like, Matt, if you can learn to play this record, you will be one of the best guitar players in the world. I still cannot play the leads from this. So Daniel Mangrain, he's now in Voivod. He is one of the greatest guitar players I've ever met. It's very like, imagine Alan Holdsworth mixed with Marty Friedman. That's just fucking mind-blowing. But this stuff was so ahead of its time. Unfortunately, no one really got into this record.

It's insane. Tech Death Jazz is almost what I would call it, the genre of it. But this was a huge influence of me. I basically kind of learned about these weird drop-deed chords that Daniel would do. I still remember it. Buss it out, dude. This is so cool. You could do this.

That's awesome. Let's see if I'm sorry. I think so. My hands a little cold. It's something like that. I don't remember all of it, but it's super fucking weird. You do stuff like that had to picky patterns like those kind of picking patterns.

And that was in the sound of her experience where Chuck would do riffs, those kinds of things. So that was very influential in. sounds like a sentence. Oh yeah. I hear it now. I'm using chords like this. This was more for martyr.

But they do it a lot more complex. I think that was. I'm going to relearn it. But it's amazing. Amazing. Amazing. Pull harder on the strings of your martyr. How did that song come up?

That was really like the song that just propelled you guys. How did that song come up? Sorry about the slight sloppiness. The different guitar came from a shop to borrow. I remember this very well. So I was actually for so, this is insignificant to how the riff was written. But I was sitting on the back of my couch like up here. Just playing my guitar in my room.

And I started coming with the, uh, we get those strange chords that changed teeth. I saw that, yeah. I see it now. That's very harder. Sorry, I forget my own riffs. But what's interesting about that part is a lot of people don't realize it's one, two, three, four. So it's four, one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four.

Oh, okay, one, two, three, then four every time. Like that. So that was a couch riff. Yeah, I was just sitting back here. Again, insignificant to the story. But then I went to our storage place, personal mini storage on OBT, is this crummy, crummy storage place where there was an illegal jerk chicken shop, chop shop next to us.

And I showed that Travis in our storage place. I was like, just play a beat that you think goes with this. These are playing that do-d-d-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Yeah, I was like, wow. I was like, why are they this Tom intro? Yeah, it just, yeah, exactly. I don't know why. And you guys kept it in there.

Sick. So much of this stuff was just written us in the room together. and I would start singing the very first random things that came to tame to mind like with flies. Immediately I just started singing on it. I was like blah, blah, then it started shifting into behold our beloved revulse. The chorus, you think I would have came with the rhythm part. I didn't. Corey came with this part.

As he played that, I was like, oh, how about a little melody on top of that? Again, so then he plays that part. I play the chords. We started using a lot of these chords because this finger's obviously super fucked up. This is from Jiu-Jitsu, but I didn't have this fucked up until like 2017. Your middle finger's fucked. Yes, it's fucked. It's not right.

But these kinds of chords never worked for me. Till to this day, just the anatomy of this finger, it doesn't fret down properly. So instead, I play these. So that's why there's so many of those, because it just anatomically, that worked better. It's also heavily influenced from a sense, excuse me, from in flames, like artifacts, the black rain, the verse. So I think it's those two things made me want to do that. But I haven't figured out how this benefits me on guitar yet. This, I don't think it does.

No, I'm unsure. Use tape, kids, if you do Jiu-Jitsu. Then how did you guys come up with the chorus on a, a martyr. Oh yeah, so one second. Because that's when I first hit of Trivium. It was just that, it was just that fucking chorus. Okay, so what's nuts about that part is the insane fill on that chorus.

Jason Sukoff wrote that. We're like together, me and Jason were like, this Corey was pretty new in the band. Our original chorus was something very strange. It wasn't that good. And remember that guitar tech I told you that yelled at me. Yeah. Eventually, we started getting along with it. So we showed him our demos.

He's like, hey, that song Paul Arder is really good, but the chorus isn't very good. It was this very downer, strange chorus. And we mentioned that Jason, he was sitting on acoustic. So acoustic guitar, when he and I came up with it, and we're like, well, how do we make this chorus different? So those are the chords. Oh, sick. There's that run. Oh, that's sick.

Black metal chord. Try it. I don't. I don't play that live. I got this instead. I'm singing. I'm like, it's the lockers.

Not make this bad. Yeah, so I got it. It's too hard to do that run. So Corey does the run for me. Yeah. So. It's a beautiful rhythm. Like Cory plays on.

Over there. He plays this diminished run. That. Yeah. There's a lot going on. on there. It's a pretty crazy chorus chords to be singing over.

I never realized there was something. If you have these chords that you don't even hear when you're listening to the song, but when I'm looking at you, you're like, oh, there's a lot more going on. There's a lot of cool, fun, chord stuff on a sentence. Again, that's why I was like, I got to prove to these people we know we're talking about.

Yeah. But I didn't have to because it was already there. Yeah, it was already there. So it was just that adolescent thing. But yeah, that runs... I still don't really ever. I never play. Apollo and Corey play that for me,

which is nice. They're both watching this clip right now, like, rolling their eyes. So, yeah, to sing it, it's like, dance like, love this best. Now we are.

It's the best. The other's got to wait. Yeah, so it's really fun stuff, really fun chords. And we've always, I've always loved having these moving chords. Those came about from, because when we were a three piece

I had to have the rhythm and the melody in one part because there was another guitar player so that's why I always write parts that had like a moving um so I could have a melody within the rhythm just that kind of stuff

I just thought it was fun nice what were the amps um ascendancy would have been I believe Andy used a 50 1552 or maybe a 50150 block with the max on overdrive in front of that. I remember being in Derby Shire for that. I was like, hey, man, what'd you use for Nevermore? What'd you use for

Arch Enemy? What'd you use for Testament? So I was just such a huge fit. Like still, if I go back to listen to Dead Heart and Dead World, Loomis' is fucking insane. Absolutely insane. But I believe they used a Mesa on that record. I think, I want to say, Andy said it was a dual Mesa, but I was 18, so it's kind of hard to remember. Yeah, you're 18, 19, right? Yeah, 18, 19. 17, maybe we made it 18, 19 when it came out. Okay. Yeah. It makes sense.

Yeah, that just took triven to a whole other. It did. It did. Yeah. Once the UK came around on that download show, and then it kind of sort of trickle out. Then we got Osfesto 5. It's it.

Yeah. It was cool. Do we haven't even, I apologize, we haven't even brought up the brand new song. Oh my gosh. Yeah, that's right. I forgot. But, man, it's been amazing to be able to talk about all this stuff.

I haven't talked about this stuff in a long time. And I never heard you talk about that first record, I think ever. Really? The first record, oh, just, there's some really fun riffs. I know we're going to do more of this shit.

Do it. So there's some riffs that are too, I can't play anymore. They're too fucking fast. I was younger, I was just better down picking. When all I dies, um,

um, yeah, I just so much, like, interesting. It's not just da-br-bra-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-b-r. And I, Where did I get this style of picking?

It was kind of from like old ice to earth. Mixed with like Old Testament. But I came with a funny name for that thing. Also sound of perseverance and martyr. I call it the John Williams. The John Williams. Because you know, from Star Wars.

Okay. Down, down, down, down, down. That's one of my favorite patterns in the world. Down, down, down, down. Drown and torn asunder. That kind of stuff. That was another sentancy riff, yeah. Nice.

Well, if you listen and watch and check out the brand new trivium song, you said you're going to teach me a new riff or something. Yeah, so I want to show you an old riff and new riff, but let's go over a sedency riff first. Oh, please. And then we'll go over. the lead single. I mean, if it was up to me, we'll keep going to

jam all day. Yeah, this is awesome. But I'm trying to, like, get out your, a new song. Yeah, yeah. I do a job. So the one I want to show you is one that I've taught other guitar players over the years, and it's always stumped them. Like, guitar players that are better lead players than me,

and I'll show them this. But it's one I came off a sentence. It's cold suffocating sight. That's a rip off a second ago. I might not have pulled enough yet. Warm up and up yet. So that the verse and the pre-course, but it's... It's all about the alternate picking that.

I'm horrible, I should... stuff sucks to play and sing well it's not too bad i think when i sing it it ends up getting easier um Yeah, I am part of us, a center of something It's a guy Turn up those two as famous the world The star and still starts For a nut

Yeah, so it's like, it's fun. I don't know where that picking pattern came from. Bapapap, bra-p-p-d-p-da-p Shit. It's weird to play it slow. Yeah. But yeah, that's what I was talking. But I could show you the doubt, the, the crowd, the dead inside riff.

Oh, please. Yeah, yeah, you have a spare pick? I do. Oh, thank you. Oh, you used to eat. Orange one. Yeah, that's my signature one. So we did that one for the ascendancy anniversary.

Okay. Oh, this one we can be standard. Standard. Yeah. Standard seven. Standard seven. Yeah. So you will be in E flat.

B flat, yeah, B flat E flat. Boom. Okay, I'm there. One little switch. Oh, that's that? So from that? Yeah. Damn, I'm done. That's awesome.

Dude. Hell yeah. All right, so this one. So, so second front? Box. All up to seventh front on me. Yep.

That's the main riff. the first time it's all open 5.3-2-1. Sorry, I said one. This is one of those tricky Pollo riffs. So Pala wrote this riff. This rift's like fun story on this one. He originally called it Grime.

Was it called? The original demo this was called Enter Slam Man. Okay. Because he came with this riff. Enter Slam. Yeah, so he came up this riff and he said, I wonder what a riff like this over the intro of inner salmon would sound like. Okay. So that was the whole inspiration behind this kind of playing this like slammy death metal riff over an intersaman kind of drumbeat.

Okay. And it spawned the rest of the song. Wow. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Something. All right.

Yeah. Okay. And then the bridge is super fun. I thought you'd like this rip. I got to remember. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, when I hear that one, oh, they're... You're slamming.

So... One, two, three. Right. Um, one, two, three. Right. Yep. It's like this weird Jaws riff.

It's really cool. It reminds you of Jaws. It's a Jaws lamp. John Wings back. Yeah, it's fun. It does something. on the two for both of the It's cool warm-up riff.

Yeah, it's fun. It's trippy, too. I remember the first time you showed us that riff, I was like, what the hell? Like, yeah, we write very different styles. Yep. For the first one. Yep.

Oh, yeah. Almost got it. And then it's cool, too, because the solo part, we take parts of the song and kind of shift it around. like that kind of stuff. So it's like keeping this motif where it's before we would have written 20 riffs.

But now we have a main motif that sticks to it out. Like the verse. Then we just shipped up to. Then we just shipped everything up 45, 4.4.3. The main riff. Nice.

That's a chorus. Oh, nice. Yeah, it's fun stuff. Like, yeah, it's cool. It's cool how all of us write And it sounds very trivium, but there's subtle flavors to the way the three of us running a guitar is a little different. Yeah. So the process would be essentially like this.

We're standing up at the hangar. He shows me a riff. We kind of start shifting it around and starts changing a little bit between me and Corey and Paulo. Or Corey would start running the melody over my part, things like that. Yeah, it's really fun. That's awesome, man. Yeah, it's different for a trivium riff, too, especially that enter slam man. It's very different for us.

But we love the groovy 90s death metal stuff. like old cannibal, old morbid angel. It's still in our DNA back there. Of course, and when they grew up, it's just like... Oh, man, like, still off gateway. They'll have one doing the chugs. That's my favorite thing about that riff, it's like, one side is like, chugging,

the other side is this tremble. It's so weird that does that. That's my favorite, like, oh, it's so... As like this, like, dimension to it, it's cool. Really, really does, man. And live, it's just, oh, God. Yeah, oh man. So, yeah, I remember seeing them on the,

that was the reinvented at the Steel Tour. It was Pantera with Moran Angel doing that. Oh, you went? Oh, you went to that. Yeah. I was so sick. Soulfly was on that too, I think. I didn't go. I tried to get, it was sold out.

So me and my friend, my friend's mom drove us there to L.A. And we're trying to get like scoppel. Yeah. But there was, it was not going to find shit. Yeah. Like, fuck, dude. I was outside. I tried to get in, dude.

It was just a tick-ass roof, man. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, there's some really fun riffs on this one. Like, there's a song we have called Live It All on the record that I came up with. It's, um, it's fun stuff because we've, we've gone so tech, and it's not that we're going to stop doing that. So I'm going to stop playing the old stuff. But this one, we're like, let's really let the material breathe.

And what's been nuts, I've always been very proud of our records. I can go back and listen. What I thought's always been nuts is I've met so many. musicians over my life who I'll ask them about a record I love. And they're like, I haven't listened that since I recorded it. But you know, when I think of food, because I love food so much, I want the chef tasting it. I want the chef to love what he made that to want to eat what he or she made. And same with the, I can't imagine Christopher Nolan film The Odyssey and was like, I haven't seen it since I shot it. Like I'm sure he watched it and loves it and appreciates it.

With this new record, I'm actually able to listen to it. Like when I want to listen to metal, like when I'm working out, I'll listen to our new record, which I haven't been able to do before. Like I'll go back and be able to check out like, oh, I'm proud of this record or sent and see. I can listen to it for like a second. But this one I'm actually able to go back to and listen to as a fan of metal, which kind of blows my minds. I'm like, what happened with this new one that's so different? But I'm very excited with this new one. Very excited.

Great. So it's once on out now. Is there a timeline you want out there? Yeah. What's trippy is that we've actually shifted. So originally the record was come out in January. Yeah. We've all been so excited about what's going on with it.

Like we just flew back from, I flew from Latvia to Switzerland. Sweden to hear. We did two videos in Latvia with Pavel. He's done the new eminence videos. He did our Shadow of the Abitouar video. He's got this insane giant room. It has this giant LED screen. It's like what they shoot a lot of the Marvel movies on. So it's like instead of just being a green screen, it's this immersive like LED panel where it shifts the camera view. So if you're looking at it, it can put you in this different world. So that was amazing. We shot the next video the day after in this like abandoned Coke bottle factory. It looks. like hostel slash saw but it's in Latvia.

Yeah. And yeah. So we shifted it to November. I believe the new record comes out November. I should know the date. I don't know that I'm not rehearsing the date yet, but it's, it is, it is such a good album. I'm so excited about this album.

So excited. It's tough for you, man. Yeah. It's cool to see, uh, see your band still around. Um, seems like you like, everything seemed like it just like solidified with a sin. Yeah. Right? It really did.

And then, uh, silence in the snow. Like, once that record was. done, you guys are already, you already had a risk started to fly out, right? Which would eventually like become sin. Yes. And, uh, when you're working on sin, uh, sin and the sentence, the, the previous two records, uh, you mentioned you don't really write much. You said, you said you were, we didn't do enough pre-production together. Both producers were like, I don't want you guys overly prepared.

I want you still malleable, which makes sense. But one of the big things that is the key to trivium is that we like to practice so much to the point where I feel like it's almost too much. Yeah. Like all of us individually practice pretty endlessly. Yeah. We all practice together as a band tons. Like we never take time off.

Like even if there's a giant span of time, we're at least rehearsing at the hangar a couple of times a week. Because I mean, we love our hangar. We build that thing to make this new record. Like this new record, we can't make it without building this physical structure that we own this hangar studio. And our studio was specked up by Roger Darcy, the guy that specked out Andy Sneep's studio who did a sentence of it.

So it all goes back to that. So it's a full-on, like, studio room inside of the airplane hangar. So it's a, it's a record we could to me without doing that. But sorry, where were we? I just digressed. Yeah, I was like, I thought I heard you say like, oh, I didn't really write much for the past two records because I was just, I don't know, I was somewhere else and I

didn't even know where I was. Yeah, so this kind of starts leading up to the, I guess the mental breakdown was like only a year and a half ago from now. But so silence, I thought I couldn't scream anymore again. Prusade. I thought I couldn't scream anymore. Yeah. So this has been a theme throughout my career.

Sin were like, we have to bring it back. Sin was great because what sin was, sin was finally the record where all the tripping fans would agree on something. Remember I mentioned before, Ascendancy in Waves Shogun were the ones that everyone's like, no, this one's the best. No, this one's the best. No, this one's the best.

The other ones had their own slews of fans. Like, Vangents did very well in Germany. But sin was where everyone finally agreed, especially in the UK. We finally had made a record that outdone a sentency. When we play Sin songs, they're actually a bigger response at a sentencing for the first time ever in the UK.

The next two were made when the world was shut down. We made them kind of close to each other. I feel like they didn't have, they didn't have a touring cycle because people didn't know when touring was coming back. But we're like, let's keep moving. So we're doing like live streams during the pandemic. We did records during the pandemic.

Had those come out because didn't want to stop moving. We made the struck dead EP after the, after Dead Men and Dragons. We made the struck dead EP. That was a test. That was like a pilot test of our hangar. We're like, let's see what this thing can do. So we had the studio built out.

Roger Darcy Spex, my cousin-in-law Donnie and his construction construction business, Williams contracting, they made that. That was the first studio they had ever made. And those blueprints were insane. They were almost like 4D-looking blueprints with how much stuff it was. It's like 10 layers thick of the wall, all these different materials to make it sonically perfect. The room is like sonically perfect. Wow.

Because there aren't that many studios in Florida anymore. They just don't exist because they're too expensive. But that's why we want to build it ourselves and own it ourselves. So we tested out. And originally the Struct ADP was meant to be where we were going as a band. That was meant to be three songs that were going to be on the next record. But then when we finished it, we still had some stuff going on, obviously, behind the scenes. We had to change some people.

I'm not even talking about the four of us in the band, but we had to change with some crew people, booking agent, different things, kind of things that seemed to not be on the same wavelength as us. We obviously went through another lineup change of the band. And once all this was going on, we're like, you know what, this EP is great, but let's see what we'd make now. And so with Crown in the Grave, one of the earlier songs, Serpent and the Flame was written January 2025 when we're on the Poison in Ascendancy tour. So some stuff stems back to then, but it was really started coming together as we got closer and closer. But the mental breakdown, yes, let's get there.

So I talked about it a lot on the Poisoned Ascendancy tour. I mentioned every single night before song, Departure. And Departure on Ascendency is a song when I was 18. It was a song, thoughts were about end of life. It was stuff that I was going through myself, like just like, I wasn't close by any means or anything like that. But it was stuff that would like scarily go through my mind. And I think we all have these intrusive thoughts here and there. Of course. Some people have dealt with it.

I remember I talked to young kids, young folks who've had at tripping fans we've had, like just these things that come across our minds and we don't know why. So I would do that the speech about the year before a sentencing, I remember I showed up to practice one day. And Paula was like, Matt, we need to have a talk. And it was the three of them and myself. And he's like, what's going on? I was like, what do you mean? Like, are you okay?

I'm like, I'm great. I'm great. But on this point. you could see I started managing bands producing bands kids book all these products all these things all these businesses I was kind of even like consulting I was doing video game scores a movie score yeah I did that the Dachasm 2 score a bunch of video game cameo stuff streaming 70s week just so much and that was the point where everybody was like oh yeah I'm at the hardest guy hardest guy in metal or but he was like what's

going on with you you're not happy and when I was asked I was like you know what I'm not everything just feels kind of like it's I was leading towards this collapse which I eventually hit. And I started, I've always been all about therapy. I push people that I think, well, we'll see some folks say that therapy is a sign of weakness or that men should be strong. Men shouldn't need this. Men should just tough it out.

Or it's the exact opposite. I feel like the ultimate strength is to admit and to realize there's something going on in our minds that's not right and to tackle that and to figure out what the hell this is. I feel like that's the ultimate strength. I think the fear is when you're like, no, it's fine. It's nothing. I'm just going to get over it.

I've got to be tough and shut myself up about it. I feel like that's the generation of our parents. And the parents before them, it was even tougher and harder with bigger walls. So with that being said, I had therapy. Like, I would do it periodically. It wasn't overly consistent. But my therapist, there was a came a point. She was like, I think you need to go a little further.

I don't think this is enough. So I'd never been one that wanted to be on medication. And again, anyone's listening to this, don't just do it. You have to see a psychiatrist, talk to your general practitioner or stuff like that. But I've always felt like I shouldn't have to do this. I should be able to tough it out. And I just couldn't. Just this looming sadness.

And I started looking back at the lyrics of a sentencing, which would deal a lot about songs about self-deprecation, songs about loneliness, anger, aggression, some really great messages in there. Like gunshot to the head of trepidation is a song that deals with domestic violence and child abuse, something that's terrible. But I've been able to meet so many fans of my life that said, I don't think I would have been able to continue in life without this song, because I thought I was the only one going through this. I thought it was the only person. I thought it was my fault. And seeing these lyrics made me realize it wasn't. So thank you for helping save my life in that. And I started looking at departure.

I was like, I can't believe I'm still thinking. these things. Why am I thinking this? My life is good. I've got good things going on. I got the band and the family. So I started actually speaking to a psychiatrist and we realized that, you know, it's been diagnosed. I've got very high anxiety as most of us do, ADHD as most of us do, OCD. But these things all combine and manifest into like depression, dysmorphia, self-loathing. I would always, I would have spells of like weeks or days or months of just being sad, angry, just and couple that with the stuff that I was dealing with. I was 18, 19, 20, 21, favorite bands, hating us, fans hating us, uh, all this stuff. So just kind of pile on top itself.

I think you followed it up and then it was finally starting to like manifest out. Yes. And if you look across all the lyrics and that's what's been great about metals, you can always tackle this stuff. And the hope is that it kind of gets out. But I realized from these, this point was a dragon word have already been out. Um, nine, 10 records of, which you'll see this darkness me addressing it. Vengeance Falls is pretty much talking about how I felt like the world is, or humanity is, is completely done for. Just the way we treat each other. There's no empathy. I mean, that song, um, villainy thrives is, again, I feel like our lyrics are often overlooked. That song's about like school shootings.

It's like something that isn't like really addressed enough. So it's all this stuff, this mental weight of everything just I, I hate whatever a mental breakdown slash midlife crisis is. I hit it. I was in this point of just this extreme funk. Um, and now I have these, these two young kids that I feel terrible that I'm not like there mentally enough. I got my wife who's like just kind of got out of pregnancy. I just had to put down our dog as I held my dog in our arms and euthanized, euthanized her. And I mean, maybe not euthanize is the right word, but yeah, I guess technically, but, you know, she had metastata, uh, not metast, I can't. She had, um, osteosarcoma in her knee. And so all of this stuff had been piling up. And finally,

I kind of just crashed. And especially when he asked me that, I wasn't like, I wasn't like, bawling or anything, but I realized I'm just in this funk. And that's what was bearing it with work. It was bearing it with things, side projects and all these things. And I was doing, I was The output of everything was fantastic, like all the things I did. But so I realized anxiety, ADHD, OCD, um, I'm naturally low on serotonin. Just like some people have natural high blood pressure. Some people have high cholesterol. You need certain medications to bring this down.

I finally realized that that's the best metaphor to think of it. So sort of taking this just low clinical dose of serotonin that Lexapro and Busebarone every single day. At first it was a wild ride. I started it and kind of got off of it because I was like, I don't need this. And then I had like brain zaps and stuff like this. And yeah, kept up with the therapy. but also started doing CBT cognitive behavioral therapy because of the OCD, you start to realize that your brain makes patterns just like everything.

In Jiu-Jitsu, we teach you how to fall correctly. That's something that people don't know. They don't know how to fall correctly. Even just saying that's such a weird concept, but you start to develop the muscle memory of what is to fall correctly. In life, certain reactions will create different things. Every time someone cuts you off on the road, you might freak the fuck out. Every time someone criticizes or compliments or something, we start to create these patterns. We don't realize their patterns

It's our brain Just like guitar patterns Like my pinky's always raised too high Because I broke it as a kid Boxing with one boxing glove When I was like 16 And so because this pattern Is so ingrained for 15 years

It just is that way I don't mind it So I leave it But the way we react to situations in life Starts to create these patterns And so as a matter of learning To address all these Break these down

Figure out why So the cognitive behavioral therapy Plus psychiatry Was a thing that we delved heavily into Once I started sorting out through this mental stuff and coupling and all the stuff I'd always have. Like I always had like sun time, exercise, barefoot time walking through the stuff, eating right. Like all this stuff, it wasn't enough. So I brought that into it. And then I started noticing that life felt different.

Things like when I'd first go through first show up at the airport after leaving my family and kids, that was always like one of the heaviest moments for me like first kind of going through the security stuff and I just feel this like intense weight like I fucking hate it. Yeah. I thought I just left them and just feel that, you know, that exact same feeling. That's one specific feeling. That's not there. anymore. I don't feel that. Not in a bad way, not like, oh, I could leave them, but it's like, no, I'm going to do something that benefiting them and us, let's go through it. And I don't have that anymore. Or like when I'm hanging out with favorite bands, I'm not a little bit nervous or giddy to tell them the way I think, or to stick up for myself or it's nuts. And the biggest

change that everyone can feel from Trivium is that, you know, we talked about my voice, talked about all these times I've quit screaming or not felt right singing and screaming. And actually, shit before we go into there, Struck Dead EP. There was even a moment where we had a blowout at the studio, which is very odd because our chemistry is so good in the band that I left. And I called, I remember calling Ashley and like, I'm done with this band. Yeah, during Struct Dead EP. This is very recently.

I'm like, I'm out. Fuck this. I'm done. While we were recording Struck Dead, which is a year and a half ago. So obviously, like, stuff was up. But nowadays, all this stuff I was doing for my hands. singing all this stuff I was doing for everything I'm singing and screaming better than I've ever done in my entire life and it's not a technique it's not the way I trained yes those 10 years with Ron were awesome

but nowadays before I used to be like I have to work up exactly this five to six hour window before after these exact same things I have a twitch backpack that I always have with me everywhere I noticed was a big OCD kind of band-aid that my brain was just I was grabbing all these things to have to distract myself from it from my thoughts I think now I don't have to do that I used to not be able to, I used to fear eating alone. I used to not just not like eating a restaurant by myself. So I was like, come on. Can someone come with me? Like, luckily, we'd always, we always had breakfast and dinner together as a band, but I wouldn't go do that. It was a big thing for me because I love food so much, but I would never just want to sit alone with my thoughts. Yeah.

I've been doing that nonstop. I'm singing, screaming better than ever. I'm finally in the moment singing. I'm finally in the moment playing. Not that I wasn't before, not that I wasn't enjoying it. But my entire life from 12 and a half till I started sorting my stuff out and sort of coming out of it. And again, it's not a cure all and all. Like it's not done. I always have to work at it. You always have to work at it. Just like fitness, just like our bodies, just like our brains. Just like our bodies. We have to always work at it. Now that I know the tools. And before, I used to have a spell that would last weeks or a tour long and just not be happy or being this funk. Sometimes it lasts five minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes, an hour, maybe a day. But I can come back

out of it doing the right things. With the singing and the screaming, the ascendancy thing, when they said you got to just scream it right once I started treating my brain. Again, screaming and singing better have it. I didn't think I could ever do the student. I didn't think I could ever do the studio style live and now I do it all the time. It doesn't run out and it's not a technique. It's not a thing. It's not my vocal drops. It's none of that. It's that I sorted my brain out and my jiu jitzu started getting better. I used to always wish that in Trivium shows I could hit flow state or you're just not not thinking. You're just in the moment. You're present. Your brain is quiet. You're so present. You're just like you're all I'm like and I would get that grappling. I wouldn't get that during techniques of jiuetsu,

but actually sparring, grappling, fighting. I would have it then. I was like, I wish I had that for Trivium. Finally have that. I've never had that in my entire life until I sorted my stuff up mentally. And now I see, I can see it in the crowds. The reaction is different because I'm no longer sitting there going, okay, now here comes this note. I got to do this note.

I'll have time to switch this technique. Uh-oh, did I have coffee too late? Because is I going to burn my voice? Oh, no. I ate this acidic thing. So this would have messed up this note. That's how my brain was all the fucking time. And just saying it sounds nuts.

I think even like when we were doing this, I wouldn't have been able to talk us truthfully. Not that I would hold anything to step back, but I would be. be like, oh, maybe I shouldn't talk about this, this bad thing or that bad thing or the Structedad thing. It just cleared it out, man. And I really, again, not everyone needs to be on medication, but I feel like everyone does need to skive time for their brain.

I feel like anytime fan asks me something like, hey, what's some just quick advice you can me? I say, every human needs a hobby that isn't their job or their physical activity. Something like cooking, learning a foreign language, video games, something that isn't monetized and it's just fun. Everyone needs a physical activity. running, jogging, jiu-jitsu, weightlifting. And everyone needs to address their mind. And it can be too much to put it on a significant other or best friend. I used to always kind of like, try to lean on my wife and like,

hey, can you help me with this sadness? She's like, I've been for like 18, 19 years. She's like, I do feel like you need maybe a little bit more. And so speaking to someone, like if people can, you know, I know everything's expensive these days, but if it's in their insurance or something, if you can talk to someone who's like a licensed mental health counselor, think of it like getting a massage. Think of it like getting a chiropractic procedure or a cryo.

That's what it's like. It's just it's allowing yourself to give your mind the space to clear it out so that everything can be better. My jitza has gotten better since my singing, screaming. Before, like those couple mistakes I made on guitar, I would have beat myself about that. I would have been maybe like, hey, can we cut and redo this? But now I don't mind. Or I beat myself up if I missed a note on stage. I talk about it ceaselessly.

But yeah, I feel like I'm finally living life for the first time almost. And I wish I did it earlier because I'm in my 40s, but I guess better now than in my 60s or 70s or 80s. And I feel like I've been a better parent, a better friend, better bandmate, better husband, better all this stuff since sorting this stuff out. Wow. And everyone needs different levels of it. But I think that's the ultimate strength. And Paul caught it. Yes. Yes. And I'm so lucky about that. What was that feeling like when like so he, I mean, this is like face to face. Like he like he like came up to you like, hey, are you? Oh, it was that. Oh, it was that ultimate feeling of in trouble of being at school. Remember that old hot feeling at the back of your head. What was that? It was that. But just also this panic. Because I remember I showed up. I had just gotten like podcast scam. How clever they were on a podcast. Like these big podcast or emailed me and like, oh, we want to have you on our podcast.

Just give us this information. Just show us your Facebook thing. I showed them a screen and I just showed on my phone. Phone to like Facebook something, the account manager stuff. Next thing I know my Facebook was hacked. Oh no. You got in there. Yeah.

Because you're so busy. You're like in the flow. This is part of like the 100%. Boom. That's how they get you. In the middle of also being a consultant for like five companies and a manager for a couple startup bands trying to get like this band on tour. and producing this record and all this stuff.

But all of that was my brain just reaching out to do as much shit as it could, which was the exact opposite of what I needed to try to distract itself. And I used to never like days off on tour. I'd be like, I know I got to work. So I'd streamed for like eight hours a day. I'd stream Twitch like eight hours a day. As soon as I'd get in the venue, I'd set up my guitar, start streaming on Twitch. Just make sure I got to keep working.

I got to keep earning. Got to keep doing this. And it's not because I had to do that because I had to pay the bills. But it's because I was always chasing something. Or before I look at, I would never want to like watch music videos or live videos or anything of anything because I'd be like, oh, I'd see these other bands that, well, they started after us and they're bigger than us. And so I've failed. Like I'm the one that said we're in the X Metallica and we're not. So I've failed.

I've ruined this. But sorting it through, having my kids, they don't care how big my band is. My kids just want me to like play with them and hang out with them and be there. Matt, Tribium is a really big band. But I still have some of that, that humbled dysmorphia. I get it. still have some of that, but it's never enough. Yeah, it's the pre-programming because it's been there probably since I was like three

or four or five. Yeah. And, you know, for those out there listening, you've got like kids, what I've learned from my CBT, my cognitive behavioral therapist is that with children who start exhibiting these signs, because of course my kids are of my DNA and, yeah, you know, I don't want them to have to be 40 thinking the same things I'm thinking. If they start exhibiting the signs, you can help kind of work them out of these things before they keep going.

And that's why I like so much that I see like this generation is so different. Because I remember when I was a kid, you know, any like field trips or school events, it was always like 100% moms. And nowadays, it's like 50, 50 moms, dads doing the things. And I think that's so great. So I'm kind of diverging to a totally different subject here. But the long end or the short end of it is that anyone's ever felt this kind of looming sadness all the time. That's not normal. It was my normal, but you can sort through it, but you have to seek like,

professional help, professional advice, starting at like a mental health counselor. And it's not something that's just you talk to them once and you're good. It's something you have to incorporate your life kind of forever. Even on good days, I talk to my therapist. And that's very, very important. And what's amazing is meeting Rudy and having Rudy back in the band, he does the same stuff too. Cori and Powell, they don't need it. Some folks don't need it.

But some people really do. And the ones that can address that, again, that is the ultimate form of strength. I have a weakness. I want to figure out what it is and sort it. Just like, okay, let's talk about something that's the exact, opposite, something in strength in my jiu-jitsu. I'm a black belt. I guess I could have said I've arrived. I'm in a sign band. I guess I could have said I've arrived, but I'm still always working at it.

Guitar, I will never arrive. Vocally, I will never arrive. I need to keep working at it all the time year-round. Just like jiu-jitsu, there's always be someone bigger and badder and stronger. So with jiu-suitz, I'll look at what are my weaknesses? I'm going to strictly work those. I'm just going to strictly work in those. And now I'm actually a jihitsu teacher at my gym, which is amazing. Oh, sick. Yeah, so I teach two classes a week of this whole new learning style called ecological dynamics. So the traditional way of jiu-jitsu is a third of the class is warm-ups. A third of the class is you're seeing a technique exactly from your sense and your professor. They show you exactly how to do it. You do it in those steps, which is fantastic. That is a very,

very good way to learn as well. In the last third, you grapple. But I found this great coach named Greg Souters. I started studying what he does, ecological dynamics slash constraints-led approach. It's if I were to show you a jiu-suezoo game right now, I would have you, let's say, you're just like, you're on your back. You're playing guard like you've seen in MMA. Your legs are just up. What I would do is I'd have to stay within your knee line. We'd set a five minute timer, full live resistance.

You put me on my hands or my butt. I just have to stay standing. That simple versus, okay, here's the 15 steps to doing a go goopata. And I've been teaching classes of this. So I've kind of learned through Greg stuff and sort of watching that, but I started applying this in my school.

And what's great is my school is incredible traditional school. My sense slash professor is amazing. Gustavo Mugiadi, one of the greatest jutsu folks I've ever known. And everyone always says the same thing. with him. But it's amazing he's allowed me to try this new school and like applying this thing. Because what I made me realize, that's the way I learned guitar. When I was playing guitar, I never really wanted to learn other band's songs. I don't know any other band's full song.

Maybe Metallica's master puppets. That's it because we covered it. But the middle, I forget it. I've always wanted to like see what people do and create my own stuff from it. And I think that that's what CLA slash ecological dynamics is, is it, it has you do a task, put someone on their hands or on their butt, write a song on all downpicked, write a song without using these two fingers, only use power chords using your pinky and your pointer finger, or test these different things vocally to see what works. I recognize that I kind of learn backwards. It takes me four times long to learn something as someone else.

But this method of jiu-jitsu is something that that kind of like is that, which is very cool. And that's a huge digression. Nice. What, uh, so you, what was that conversation like? I mean, so you like had it in like, because I was just recently there. Like, when you're like, you have in your head, like, I'm going to quit the band. It's over.

And then the first person you tend to tell is your wife or your partner. Yep. Yeah. I did the same thing. Yeah. You're like, slow down. Yeah. Slow down.

Give it some time. Yep. So you had it in your head that like. Yeah. Yeah. Because I erase your whole history and past. Yeah. Because there's just, I felt like there's a part of our band that always was a little

bit cursed. Because like what's been unfortunate is every lineup change we've had, people always go, oh, it's Matt. Matt's the megalomaniac. It's like, trivia fans. You guys have been. with this for a long time. You know me. I have put myself out there. I give a lot. Like during the again, it's funny, I haven't brought up the pandemic in years, but bringing that back up. I kept my

Twitch stream going for that entire thing, seven days a week. So people had a place to be. People had a place to be with people. You inspired me, man. Like real quick, I'm not going to make it about me, but you're wondering like the people on my list were like, I could do more, dude. And like, there's just, thanks, man. You know, it's, I'm a guest in the way you might have inspired this. Oh, holy shit. When I see people, oh, I mean, you are more, like, there's a lot of time in the day. I'm like, I mean, okay, I could write a few risks, but what am I going to do the rest of the fucking day in the whole week? Do you like, and okay, I want to do this. Let's just do this.

And then there's only, there's very, very few people, Matt, in the metal space that are actually working at their full capacity. And you are one of them. Dude, that means so much coming from, man. I see it. I see it. I know during the pan, I call it the appandi. like you were doing something consistently and a lot of people would have sat around.

Yeah, thank you so much, man. That means a lot. And definitely just give yourself the like that I've learned later on, the moderation. So you're probably doing the just the right amount. Yeah, yeah. Don't redline like Paula said that that I was doing. But that means so much to me. Thank you.

I learned that. Okay, like I can do more right now, but what is going to, what is sustainable? This is already a lot. What is going to, what is sustainable without crossing the line of quality? Exactly. And get to shut up your brain. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, then that's so much.

And I think you're saying that it gives me so many parallels to even like, all right, so Jitsu has been a huge part of my life for like, I've been doing it for almost 14 years now. So I recently started training with the strength and conditioning coach because I was like, I keep getting these weird injuries. Like I, oh yeah, so the mental breakdown. I also had a physical breakdown right around the same time. Like kind of, as I was getting better mentally, physically I started breaking. I tore my hip labor room in every single direction in Jiu Jitsu.

I also tore my adductor muscle. So I couldn't really walk or stand or sit and what's so we're doing struck. I had this tear. Reherniated a couple discs. My knee, right before bloodstock, I had this slight meniscus tear that happened on the All Hope is gone.

Is it All Hope was gone tour? It was a Slipknot, Tor that we did. Slipknot, Coheed, and Trivium. I fell in Black Ice and landed on this. So that kind of started the tear. But Jitsu and my main training partners did this improvisational calf slicer, and I heard this, and then I was like,

I kicked it out. I was like, I'm good, did another six rolls, walked to my car, my leg buckled out. I went to the doctor. I had to get 30% of my meniscus cut out. two days before flying to headline bloodstock before a six-week European run. So I had this busted knee, did the whole tour. So I had a physical and a mental breakdown.

But that's why I started training the conditioning. And what I started learning from him was that it is all about output stocks. Before I was like, oh, to get better at Jiu-Jitsu, I should just do Jiu-Jitsu all the time. But that's not true. You have to find the moderate, the correct amount. Yeah. You have to find a couple heavy days a week, couple easy days a week. Find the max for you.

So four or five days a week, but also lifting. So the three good lifting days to insulate everything. make everything strong. Yeah. And I started working with this partner who was a nutritionist. And before I was always like, I have Asian genes. I could just eat whatever the hell I want. So I've always eaten like so much fucking food on tour.

But to the point where it would take me like eight hours to digest. And she started scanning through. Oh my God. Like this isn't correct. So we started looking at like now that my brain was sorted, it was like maybe we can start sorting out some other stuff. Let's figure out my body for this longevity thing. So she helped dial in the exact amount of macros and calories I need per day.

But each day is different. So if I'm like lifting and doing. Jitsu, that's a much higher day and these higher calories, higher macros of everything. And every single day is different depending on what I do. So yes, it's the moderation. It's defining the correct amount of things. Touring with that Twitch backpack, we'd stream every single day from tour, every show day and every day off, I'd stream.

Redlining, burning out. I've eventually just collapsed under that stuff. So now I found the nice parts. Like, I used to never just sit on a day off. Day off a tour. I would just be like, I'd work. I'd work. I'd work out.

But now I'll just lay and watch anime. I'll go work out for a bit. And then what I love so much is I love being around my guys. That's such a big thing. It's like, if I'm going to be away from my family, I better love the people I'm with. Yeah. I remember there's one day, uh, a band guy said to us, he's like, man, every time I look, you guys are always with each other. What's that all about?

You guys are always like eating together. I was like, well, we enjoy each other's company. Yeah. And it's, it's, you know, it's, it's kind of, you know, like being a band is kind of like a marriage. It's kind of like, it's kind of like being coworkers, kind of like being married to them. You sleep right by them. Sometimes you're around them more than your family. They're really sleeping right here.

Yeah. Yeah, so it better work out. It better be right. It better be the people that if I'm going to be away, if I hated my bandmates, I would quit. I would not do this. If we did not get along, I would not do this. So to kind of like go back to leaving on the struck dead, talking about the Astoria's story, the fact that we started seeing this bubbling back up again. And we hit a point like, this was just like, holy shit, it's 05 Astoria backstage again on tour.

How was this possible? That's why we had to go into another change. and as you know, you know just as well as I do, which is so nice and reassuring to speak to you because sometimes when people are like, well, how come the band couldn't have been that lineup that I remember from this other record? Now I hate you because you guys aren't this.

It's like sometimes the chemistry of people just doesn't work. You got to recalibrate some time. Yes, because it was almost on the verge of just self-impulsion. And now this last European run we did, it was truly the best we've ever been live ever. Look at that right there. Beautiful.

Like the four of us just like in Athens, just seeing the Acropolis together. Like it was incredible. So now we got this lineup that we tried to get 10 years ago. 10 years ago, I tried to get Rudy in our band. 10 years ago was a huge fan of Alex Rooneyer. I've ever seen his faceless Xenocryst video. I was like, this is fucking insane.

Who is this guy? We had just parted ways with Nick at this point. And I said, guys, we cannot make another drummer change. Like we've made two now in our career. We cannot make another one. So let's make this right. So reached out to him. He flew down.

We ate, oh, that food was so fucking good, by the way. That was in Athens, just giant hunks of meat and fries. Oh, so good. I'm hungry right now looking at that. Yeah. Hungry right now looking at that. But yeah, we love being around each other. And so what we do on tour is like even this,

I better get to the Rudy thing. I'll go back. Real quick. Yeah. When do you need to be out of this door? What time is it right now? It's 1150. When do you need to be out of this door?

That's a good question. What time? Oh, damn. 20 minutes? I was time's in five. Got it. All right. This is the best chat ahead for it.

Keep going, please. This is the most fun. I've been chatting in a long time. So, yeah, with Rudy, I was like, we need to get this guy in our band. We flew him down. We had an amazing dinner out of a local restaurant. Things were going really well,

talking them all the time, and we keep on the cusp of him joining. Yeah. And I remember being on a press tour in Sweden, texting with him, just, he just sent me long text, long text. Yeah. And Rudy, this is that he's long fucking texts.

And he decided no. Oh. I was like, God damn. I was like, dude, after all this fucking time of talking this guy by phone. Yeah. He's not, but what the thing is, is he just started the band Good Tiger.

don't want to look these guys down. And he later told us the most conflict that he'd ever been on anything in his entire life. Yeah. So this band he just started with his friends, but now he's being talked to by these other band, this other band that really wants him in.

Yeah. So he decided not to. And so we went our separate ways. Obviously, we had to do several changes. And, um, when we flew over for after shock, we had the incredible Grayson step in and fill in for that show. And I got a text from Rudy.

He's like, hey, I heard you guys might need a drummer. I'm available. Yeah. And I just, I mentioned Apollo. I respond to the day, thanks so much. We're all set for now, but I mentioned the following. I remember there's a day, Paulo was like, I called him, I hit him up. He's driving down.

He's going to move here. So his first day coming in, he had the set ready. And instead of having him play the set, we're like, all right, welcome, good to see you again after these years. We're going to write a new song with you right now. So the first thing we did with him after making him cram for a tour was write a new song with us. And with this ended up.

This would for a crown of the grave. Okay. So this was like only like eight, nine months ago. Wow. This was right before that ginger run. Um, but yeah, he flew in. He was, or drove, drove in, had an entire set prepared. And then we just had him start playing.

There's, there's that faceless video. That one was just blew my friggin mind. Um, but where was I going with that? But yeah, the chemistry is right. It's the guy we've been looking for for our entire career. Obviously tried to get him 10 years ago to stop, stop the hemorrhaging back then. Yeah. But we got him and it's, it's, it's wonderful.

And he has also been one who's gone through an incredible mental health journey. And he's got his stuff sort out. It's a constant something you've got to keep up all the time. And I've talked about that a lot. He's gone through the ringer as well with other bands. You know, he's been in several bands, has gone through all sorts of ups and downs. We've shared the stories of ups and downs. And I mean, I think there's some downs that all of us bands wish we could talk about publicly.

But like sometimes it might be a little bit too much. But it is people need to remember. It's like, I learned, I learned to speak, which I got from a Howard Schultz. He's the, he's the former CEO of Starbucks. He got Starbucks back on the map. He put it in the words, oh, that's what I'm talking about. He's like, speed through transparency through a tighter lens. Yeah.

Don't say like everything, but say like, you know, be the transparent, but just bring, it's bringing the lens in. Yes. You know. Yes. Yes. And for us, our radar is really attuned because we've had these moments of whether the chemistry between the four of us has been incorrect or the band's almost falling apart or

I've almost fallen apart. So when we started seeing this stuff happening again and all of a sudden, our live shows aren't as tight anymore. Oh yeah. The material of a sentency is sounding loose and not correct anymore or the happiness isn't there. There's something incorrect. Because like, again, we addressed my issues and we need everyone functioning at the point where

it's not just playing correctly on stage. It's not just delivering on the record. It's everything else. Yeah. And to have a guy, I've literally watched on Rudy's Instagram and his YouTube, him build a snare drum. He can make a fucking snare drum out of wood and everything. He can run DAWs. He's got this crazy rack system he's created.

So he can do all the stuff that me, Corey and Paolo have been able to do. Like we each have different strengths. Like Corey knows music theory in and out, but can also tech a guitar and can also like program a digital amp. Me. I can program a stream rig or I know how to like do social media like that kind of stuff. So we all have our different strengths. Paulo, he's an incredible like band director.

Like he's really great at like looking at our live show, looking at a record looking at a theme. I remember for Crown on the grave, he was like, we need a record that everything makes sense together. That's where Crown went. And I'm not saying the other ones didn't, but he's like, this all needs to be one focused vision. We can't go over here, over here, and over here. It needs to be one focused vision. Or Matt, you're going to tighten up your screaming or noticing that I wasn't mentally there. Yeah. So we all have our different strengths and and weaknesses. And it's always been about this equality. So yeah, back to when people think it's always Matt running this thing and running like a dictatorship. Yeah. We've had Corey, since the

so three, Paulus and so four, myself since 99. Like the three of us have always been there and we've always given everyone the chance and the shot to come up to where we are as well. We've always wanted that to be there. We've always been very kind and opening and welcoming and and giving everything we can to both our fans and our band and everyone around us. All of our crew even says, and you can ask any of our crew members. Like they would say it's so fun and easy working with us.

It's just easy. Our management says the same thing like, man, you guys are in the complimentary sense, normal. There's not like these weird things we have to sort through. Um, and that's why, but we also make sure there aren't weird things sort through. There, there aren't. We make sure everyone's always firing all cylinders. And if you can deliver and do everything correctly, there's the Steregrim video,

like literally building a Stere Drum by himself. If you can. Show up and be prepared and crush it 100% or give you yourself, give the all that you have, then all the fun stuff is there. That's why we can eat well and relax and chill and like you work hard as hell. So that way you can relax hard as hell. Great. All right. Let's, uh, we got our last three questions.

We got, we got, we got to go quick here. What? Okay, what are these? So, what are these? While I was going through all the stuff, like, kind of making everything, like I created a dual guitar strap, a vocal drop, a kid's book, all these things that I was making. So same time frame. Same time frame. So, so, so these almost killed you.

Yes. They're going to taste so much better. There's a lot. There's a lot that almost killed me. A lot. The Twitch stream almost killed me. I kept saying like, all right, so when we have vocal issues, it sucks that I have to go find, like, a tea kettle. Like, I remember sometimes like these fly dates of these strange country festivals.

I can't find a tea kettle. or really water that looks very bad when you open the kettle. So I was like, I need to make something more mobile. During my streaming time, I met this amazing company one shot through my buddy Graves. He's my artist rep. They make like functional energy chews. I'm not really an energy drink guy by any means. I like coffee.

I like exercise. That's kind of all I need. I was like, can we make something that's super portable for singers? Something that works for singers, screamers, people that speak, people that use their voice, teachers, instructors, podcast folks. Even my kids use them from when they've got a cough or a sore throat. They're awesome. So it's everything that you would think of as like in some kind of throw coat tea.

But then the recipe is different. Like bringing in everything that's good for the voice, honey, lemon, ginger, um, Yuzu flavor because I'm Japanese. I was like, because I'm Japanese stuff. I was like, because I'm Japanese stuff. Um, they're great. So yeah, I try to pass them to a lot of friends, anyone who uses their voice a lot. I think, I think they're awesome, man. That's cool.

And apparently T-Pain liked them so much that he made his own version, his own flavor of the vocal drop that I formulated. So that's always a good sign, right? Cool. So I just eat two of these. You can even have one, too. be the best host of all times. That's the secret. Oh, yeah, vocal exercises.

Oh, yes, please. So from Ron, we get to find which sound is easier for you. Can you do rolled R's? Like, Oh, yes. Okay, so we can, I'll send you the playlist of scales.

It's just, Oh, I would love that. Yeah, so the scales, thanks, man. The notes are just there just to give you notes. I actually, when I went up on tour, I play guitar scales and sing to it, but the sound is,

or falsetto. Think falsetto, think b-gis, make a really round. like a pigeon just a little bit of air you don't need to take too much air and just find whatever notes easy in the falsetto

purely think falsetto and if that if that sound is hard you could also I've done that sounds more in the front maybe we'll do the roll bars yeah we'll do that

this one said but you'd find I'll have the scales for you if you'll run scales like just run like five minutes of scales like that that's what I would do on guitar so I kind of run it

always working in head voice this is what Matt from Avenge also worked with with Ron. I don't know what he's doing now I think he's a different coach now but I'll see in the whole vocal menu it shows like the Rollsars first so that's working the first part

for like a minute and then working the like different part of your skull to the that's working the front so you're like feeling it and you're working on all these different parts for your skull

yeah skull okay so I my warm up now I do keep slight it's it used to be far more OCD but it's like 15 to 20

minutes of stuff in head voice like everything like that to to like working all these different parts

of nasal non nasal all inside of here then I sing trivium stuff in head voice like um

uh the river just is thought that kind of falsetto singing like that then I sing super low stuff

with my hands around your throat I haven't it's all broken down for your already broken down with the video Um, running these parts of the voice. Then I just let it snap into the main stuff.

Like, um, uh, fuck, what are our songs? So like, uh, this seems to search. So after a while, it'll start to warm up this connection. So I'm warming up all the high end notes here. Yeah. And I'm bringing the power of the low because you can't just push this into the highs. That's what Ron always taught me. But again, this, I guess is kind of contradictory what I was saying about just kind of letting

it loose as well. So this is kind of like a loose stretch is the way I think of it now versus a complete programming. I used to think if I don't do this, I will essentially die. This is what I used to think. But now it's just like I gotta make sure to do it so all the notes are there. Okay. And then everything warms up from there. So let's work a couple scales. We'll do together. Just let's do that those and we'll work up chromatically. One, two, three, four. Just loose as possible. You would have like it should be effortless. My, my tongue isn't consistent. Okay. Or they could do this one then. If you

that one isn't. Okay. You want to like kind of fill, lower your jaw, make everything very relaxed, almost like you're yawning, like, it'll get stronger and stronger.

Because what it shows is like a lot of notes do come kind of from the head voice. Okay. So it'll help out. But again, what I do is I do this old warm I used to do and then I,

once I'm warm, I kind of throw it out the window. Because before I used to warm up and try to stay in these confines, like making sure I'm staying there. But I do this as like a stretch. Okay. And then I throw out the window as if like, okay, now, now that it's warm, I could do whatever I want.

Okay. So I've kind of like redeveloped like three different styles of singing that have all mesh in the one. Before you see black and white, you know, like the old metalcore format, screen versus sun choruses. Yeah. And it was always so black and white with Trivium that, but this new one is just one voice, just one thing. You know, when we think of Jonathan Davis, we think of Chester. We don't think, oh, he's going from black to white or black to white to gray. It's just Jonathan Davis.

It's just Chester. It's just Corey Taylor. Yeah. So once I kind of threw all this stuff out, the cleans, this seems to suit you better bleeding out the eyes. That's like the kind of real way of sing, but I used to sing much more like, this seems to suit you.

So it's like this safer, more scared. The screen I probably can't even do anymore. Kids call it fry. It's not fry. It's pharyngeal larynx kids. Okay. really like clench your butt cheeks while you do it. Oh yeah.

Like, like, it's almost like, uh, think like, like macho man Randy Savage. Like, okay.

Yeah, if there's no fry, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,

like that. I'm not even thinking technique anymore. I'm just letting it happen. So basically, warm up to be warm. And if it doesn't hurt, it's correct.

Oh. So when they said, get the assentasy stuff back and I sort of mind out. I was like, okay, there's the treatment stuff. The face and the lips.

Easy. Yeah. But what about the grit stuff? That was the stuff I was always afraid of on Shogun. Like, he walks a firebraes. That kind of like what you think Hetfield sounds like in the 80s. But now I could do that stuff. Like with, um, dead.

I used to never, I've always been a low singer. I used to think stuff like the notes of the chorus are never alone. The head voice. Like if I wanted to program and have the notes ready. Never a note. So it's kind of high for real singing. But what I've been doing this grit thing. Never alone.

You're the dead inside of me. Her face is not darrow. One in the same in the mirror's gaze. You're the dead inside of me. Like that stuff I used to never think I could do ever, but it's this note that sits inside the screen. You can't tune it. It can't be pitched because of how many artifacts are in it,

but I never thought I could sing like that. So for this new record, I'm singing in a way of never sang in my entire life, and it's basically just letting it fucking rip. Yeah. Yeah, it's cool. Thank you for sharing that. I think we have time for a quick chokeout. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Okay, so yeah, I'm going to show you on me. So I don't have to show you on you unless you want to. Well, I'll show you on me first. Okay. Yeah, try to do it within five minutes. Oh, easy. It'll take us 30 seconds. Um.

So, just, so, you know, real quick in the world watching, listening. I've only rolled once and I'm, uh, my lady's been telling me, like you, like, Chris, you need to train, uh, BJJ. And I really wanted to do it, but I just took up boxing last month. I'm trying to do the foundation. So on my list to do, like, very soon is actually getting to training. Oh, man, that's, I would say with, with, with yourself and with everyone who's ever been thinking about it, start right away. It's, it's, I wanted to quit for the first three to five years.

I am not kidding, but I stuck with it. That is fucking sick. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. I remember I joined it. I was like, I'll be good because I've just been in training my whole life. So I just thought, I'm good at guitar. I'm good at vocals. I'll be fine.

I'll be good. I remember the first time I, I remember the first time I, I was. ever rolled with someone he was like 16 I this would have been when I was like my mid to late 20s he triangle choked me in 30 seconds and I was like there's no way he was like 120 pounds but jiu jitsu is one of the greatest things the world for us physically mentally um I feel like you get to truly know someone better than ever in jiu jutsu and man I wish we had more times I would just teach you the eco stuff right now because it makes more sense than like all right here's 50 moves I gotta show you sorry to you part two part part part three I'm sorry man

if we can bring you to Orlando to see the hangar you can come to one of my jiu jitsu classes We should film that because I'll make what they're considered. They're considered games. Okay. So we have like a game scenario. What I'm going to show you is more traditional. This is like this is how you do the move exactly. But like the games are just freaking insane.

Maybe I could show you some of that too. All right. Cool. Let's do it man. Yeah. We got, we have we have our first ever choke out mic. But yeah, I'll have you do it to me. Okay.

So this is the one. Yeah. Okay. So I'll be here and you just, I'll describe it too. So you're behind me. Okay. So normally for like, the rear naked choke or the Mataliyo, the lion killer, it's done.

You have to have their back first, but we don't have my back yet. I just want to show the mechanics of it. So this goes here. You want the elbow symmetrically underneath the chin. Yep. Now this is here. Now you're going to, right hand is going to grab your left bicep. So grab your left bicep like this.

This hand is going to go over the top of the back of my head. And it's going to come down and low. Put your head kind of connected here because if this was self-defense, they'd be trying to eye-gouge you, try to grab your face. And now from here, You always want to make sure this right about here. You're going to compress the space. So when I tap, you're going to let go.

You're going to compress the space by squeezing and pushing my head into my, or your hand into my head downward. So use this hand to really push here and squeeze all this stuff, make it tight. Kind of bring in your shoulders. Yep, I'm starting to see a little bit black, which is good. Keep on. And you're going to squeeze and compress everything. Keep going a little bit more, a little more.

Yeah. So that's essentially, that's the re-naked choke. I just fucking took down that so it's it's a weird thing to memorize so let's let's try that again so yeah here and then this is gonna come behind what I like to do is I usually I usually like to have the back of the hand slide down first um so sorry keep this here um so your left hand's gonna slide down backwards this way first okay so like this way and then you flip it at the end because that would because they're gonna be grabbing it it it almost gives you a bonus couple of inches to grab okay and you're gonna compress so this is squeezing and closing the space as you push my head and you're gonna compress and you're gonna compress so this is squeezing and closing the space as you push my head and you into your own arm, but close this down, make everything real tight and small. You don't even have to use really strength. You just slowly squeeze and compress. Okay. A little more.

Yeah. So, do you mind if I show you? Please. Okay. And I'll go super slow and you just tap as soon as you don't like it. Sick, dude. Okay. So it's...

I'm like, fuck trivia. And usually... Usually, actually, you know what? Send your butt. Okay. So I can give you like the full scenario. All right. So I'm, I'm your average trivia.

Your juts are hilarious, too, because they're like, when would you... You know, there's a lot of, I used to stream it. Yeah. The comments were too out of hand. I had to stop. Oh, yeah. Just dudes and, you know. Yeah.

So normally you'd want the hooks. These are called the hooks. This is so you can control the lower body. Okay. This is called the seatbelt. So I'm controlled, I'm to their body. Okay. Normally we'd finish this on the side.

But the way it is, so, because they're going to be fighting against it. So this has to come around here. That's the first step. Okay. So what I'm doing here is I'm blocking your carotid arteries, these two. Okay. That's why I said symmetrical. Okay.

So I like to make everything super tight and close. this is here and it's here. So you just tap as soon as you're like, I don't like this. Okay. Yeah. Oh, wow. And that's like 5%.

Okay. Are you, are you like ramming your head down too? Or no? I mean, normally against self-defense situation. Okay. I'd like to lock my ear.

Yeah, because I can't get to you. No, and what you would actually do, so I'd be squeezing here. It'll be like, oh, fuck you. Yeah. And they just be out. What's great is you can, like, defend yourself without ever having to hurt anybody.

Yeah. Unless you hold this too long, then they die. Yeah. Okay. So what you would do for defense. So I'm going to put this down for a second. What do you do for defense is you actually want to grab my second hand, the one that's coming behind your head.

Okay. So it's here, and before you pass out, you pull this over the front of your face. Okay. Yeah, so come around both hands. Pull this. Yeah. Pull this to the front. And then now you're going to deal with this.

Okay. So now I'm always trying to keep your hand here. Yeah, because this is what finishes the choke. There are some one-arm finishes as well. Yeah. But then you would address this. Okay. Yeah.

Cool. I'm like right. No, he can't. And then as soon as they try to come back around, you address this, and then you escape. But okay. They'll normally have you all the way over here. Oh, shit. Yeah, so it makes it much more difficult. And they can also do stuff like the body triangle. Oh, the butt. That's a triangle. Yeah, and they can squeeze for that too.

That's up the triangle. Yeah. So they're there. But what you want to do, your defense is to get off from the hillside. So you'd want to bring your whole body to the other side. Yep. And then if there are multiple ways out, then you can either like start to push the hook out. face me, you basically just turn into me. And I'll go other way.

Yeah. You go. Yep. Okay. Yep. You end up in the dog. Okay. Yeah. So that's really cool. But actually, my specialty is leg locks. Okay. Do you want to pop off your shoes? I'll show you my favorite ankle lock?

All right. All right. So with Jiu-Jitsu, it's joint locks and chokes. So basically anything that's a joint, you could break. Okay. And the brain requires blood. So you either stop the blood or you stop the air. So. I'm in a fucking... We need to do.

We need to do it. We need to do it. We need to do it. We need mats in here. So my favorite is leg locks, because everyone needs to walk. That's true. And so, the straight ankle lock is the first one I found. It's here.

And you attack the Achilles tendon first. There's three points in contact. Oh, okay. See, I'm kind of scooping. Oh, shit. Yep. And that's not even the full of it. So I'd be here.

Oh. And I would hyper extend this way. Okay. Yeah. So if I'm a trivaryator, I can't even run away. No. So from here, like, you're able to keep them down. I'm able to keep them down with all of this.

Okay. But I can also switch everything around. This is like an inside Sankaku. So this is to transition to turn this as I turn this. So it blows this. Oh yeah. Yeah, so I'd be, I'm that way. Oh, damn.

There's all sorts of really cool stuff you can do with the body. So now I'm back to here. Damn, I can't, I can't do shit. But I'll show you that on me. So, okay. This one's gonna be down here, okay, here there. Okay, so you're gonna wrap my ankle with

this you're going to put this into my Achilles right yes you're going to grab your own hand with this hand like you've seen do you gillotine yep so try to put that knife bone into my Achilles yeah and I don't want to make you lay on the floor if it's going to be uncomfortable but you want to put your shoulder on the floor so watch your elbow but your shoulder and your head on the ground too and now it's going to keep that really tight keep this tight as well you're going to push your crotch through as you arch your head back towards that um the couch you have a look back to um like head closer the wall the ground yes and you'd extend until they tap so that's an ankle lock yep but they don't really mess with leg locks

too much in the early sense of jitsu because they don't they're not used to what's happened but arm bars and stuff just makes sense like if you have my arm here clasped your hands together over my elbow can you do here and then normally I'd be in your guard here and you just start to pull that down as you kind of do like a crunch into your stomach and look look down as well tap yep that's an arm lock so anytime you can hyper extend a joint is kind of what jitsu is but you the sub is the easy part the hard part is the controls yeah of course okay uh last part up and then you got to leave cool okay so uh we we end every podcast the same what are uh three records that influenced you awesome um let's think of the

three stages of like when I talked about metal into melodic death metal metal core so we'll say Metallica black album because it was the first Metallica record ever heard and wasn't that one of the records that it was always in your dad's car was the black album and the white album yes uh he also had the burning red and he also always had the Van Halen van helen van helen van helen's greatest hits because there was only so much room for the CD player um yeah those those are the ones but so black album because it got me Metallica first but if I had to like pick a favorite of all time I'd probably say master but black album in flames I know horacle was the first one ever heard jester race is my favorite but I would say reroute to remain because that was the

first time I heard wow I can sing and scream in the same band and then I would say heaven shall burn whatever it may take because that was the first time yeah that was the first time I ever heard and saw what metalcore can be where it still sounds very metal and lyrically becomes something that's societally important that's what I always loved so much about certain metalcore bands and certain hardcore bands certain punk bands that it would go into like sociopolitical or societal subject matter yeah that was the first metalcore record I ever heard and was awesome we just did an incredible co-headliner with them a couple years in go in Europe really really amazing human beings some of the nicest people I've ever met my life nice and last last one oh that was that was the three okay okay okay ban handling greatest hits okay so black album uh rewit germane oh yeah okay boom and this but it was that was the three okay but it was the three okay If we're going to talk more, like I said, a lot, Blackwater, excuse me, Blackwater Park would be great. Okay.

Dream me. Nice. Yeah, dead harder, dead world. There's so much, so much good shit. I'm sorry, man. I'm post choked out. I'm not, I'm going to get my focus host right now. So, new song, out, out now.

Yes. Dead inside of me is out now. Nice. Hopefully when we film this, hopefully the videos out. We should film this in an old Coke bottling plant that looked like a hostel slash saw. Sick. Yeah, crown on the grave. I'm going to go on record and say it's our best album ever.

Of course. Yes. North American tour with an. Trivium In Flames, Orbit Culture, Fit for an Autopsy, Frozen Soul. All my favorite bands on one tour. And then our... Dude, what a dream, man. Dude, I love all those bands so much.

You're going on tour with In Flames. Yes. This will be our seventh tour together. Our eighth tour will be Europe. And I don't know if we're allowed to announce the bill yet. I guess it's coming up soon. So Trivium, In Flames, Pelface, Swiss, and Vola for Europe and UK, all arenas. So arenas in the UK, Scandinavian in Europe.

Congrats, man. Okay, so if you're just listening, the U.S. states are all of November to mid-Discan. That's a long one, dude. That's seven weeks? Six? Seven weeks? Yeah, and I'll have the family out with me on Thanksgiving, which is great. Well, keep up with the therapy because after three weeks, you're like, and then I've always got the maths with me as well. So all bands that everyone will learn, I've taught multiple bands.

I promoted Jamie from Bullitt. Actually, it was Blue Belt. I've promoted Jake from ABR to lick his first strike by his white belt. So yeah. Amazing, man. Yeah. Love you, Matt. Thank you, man.

Pleasure. All right, when that's it, later. Hell yeah. Dude, that was awesome, man. Oh, yeah. Thank you. Sorry,