TRIVIUM — The Crusade (review)

Album · 2006 · Thrash Metal

3.5/5 · 2016-08-26
Unitron

The best album Metallica never made?

After releasing Ascendancy, which is now regarded as a classic metalcore album, the band decided to mostly abandon the metalcore sound in favor of thrash metal. Trivium were certainly no strangers to playing thrash, as Ascendancy featured quite a nice blend of metalcore, thrash, and melodic death metal. However, the band apparently never listened to bands that screamed so thought, "Why should we?". So, the band came to thrash.

While this is mostly thrash, the band does draw on classic heavy metal and groove metal at times. Personally, I find it best when they combine thrash with classic heavy metal or groove. A couple great examples are "Anthem (We are the Fire)" and "To the Rats". The former is a great fist-pumping metal anthem, and the latter is a groovy thrash track sounding like a mix of Metallica and Pantera. "Becoming the Dragon", despite sounding a bit too Metallica at times, is certainly also one of the best.

Now, the reason I feel like those aforementioned songs are the best is because they don't sound like pure Metallica worship, which is the majority of the album. Hell, they even have an eight-minute instrumental in the vein of Metallica's instrumentals. Now, I love Metallica and thrash metal is my favorite genre of music, but I'd be lying if I said it isn't annoying when a band sounds almost exactly like another. I kind of have the same issue with Alter Bridge, great musicians, but they just sound too similar to Ra. I'm sure if the vocals were a bit different, it wouldn't be as much of an issue, but vocalist Matt Heafy sounds exactly like James Hetfield in his prime.

However, despite the album sounding too much like blatant Metallica worship at times, there is stuff to enjoy here. If you can separate the two, there are some absolute killer tracks here, such as the more unique songs that I mentioned. If you like thrash and can take some hero veneration, this isn't a bad choice.

Hope you found this review helpful, feel free to comment!

more than 2 years ago
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Tupan wrote:

more than 2 years ago

I'm not a really a fan of Trivium, but they do have some good songs, like the final track of this album, The Crusade. The vocalist hasn't the most memorable voice in the business, though.

arcane-beautiful wrote:

more than 2 years ago

personally I have alot of problems with this album. half of it is some of their strongest material. then the rest is godawful metal cheese with some of the worst lyics I've ever heard. "for you're honor, you will slaughter every one of your daughters, it is you who should be slaughtered." also that instrumental at the end is boring as sin

Unitron wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Yeah, he just doesn't have much of a distinct voice. Shogun is my favorite, as I think they got their mix of styles down really well with that album.

UMUR wrote:

more than 2 years ago

I´ve often listened to Trivium and have seen them live a couple of times too, and I always end up with the same feeling when listening to them. The instrumental part of their music is actually pretty decent and even pretty good at times, but I can´t stand the vocalist. He ruins the music for me. This one is one of their better albums though as it´s one of their more thrash oriented ones.