Overview
Today I am listening to Trivium’s album “The Crusade”. This is Trivium’s third studio album and it was released on October 10, 2006 from Roadrunner Records. This album features their singles “Detonation”, “Entrance of the Conflagration”, “Anthem (We Are the Fire)”, “The Rising”, and “Becoming the Dragon”. Let’s get to it!
Song Analysis
The album starts with the song “Ignition” which is not an instrumental track, unlike how the first two albums started. You know it’s going to be great when the album starts with a song this strong and intense. This song transitions to “Detonation”. I really enjoy the way the song “Detonation” starts. It has perfect guitars, bass, drums, vocals, perfect everything!!
“Entrance of the Conflagration” really showed some juicy guitar work half way through. I did like hearing the echoing “aaaaahhh” throughout the song. “Anthem” begins with some pleasant guitar work, and especially ends with some nice guitar work too. I am really blown away by this song in general. “Becoming the Dragon” is so sick, the drum parts through the middle sound so cool, and definitely there are some interesting guitar techniques too.
“To the Rats” starts with some really great thrashy riffs, I love the lyrics. This is probably my favorite song on this album, and it is definitely going to be stuck in my head quite a bit. The opening has such a strong old school sound. I love the way there is a shift in the mood of the song when he sings “Break every bone in your face / If you mess with my life / I’ll mess with your blood / Bury you in a coffin made of your / A coffin made of your deceptions”. It’s almost threatening in a happy way. Then between those choruses, it’s so heavy and fast and great shredding, it’s beautiful.
“This World Can’t Tear Us Apart” is such a beautiful song and it feels so sweet to listen to. It is really pure and is presented in such a strong and powerful manner. It’s great to hear such positive lyrics in metal, especially with how wonderful of musicians they all are.
“The Crusade” has a cool baseline in beginning, very cool arpeggios. I like that they made the title track an instrumental piece that is longer than eight minutes, longer than any other song on the album I believe. It does a really great job of showing their instrumental skills. They are pretty mad in that area.
“Broken One” starts with a nice fat baseline, the lyrics are pretty chilling. It does feel like it touches on the darkest times in life. It kind of brings up deep emotions I would prefer to leave in the past hahaha. “Defeat grips you / Life deflates you / Kills yours hopes too / You won’t make it through” and “You feel like the broken one / Over and over again” are pretty emotional things to think about.
It is pretty crazy seeing how much this album (“The Crusade”) is different from the album before it (“Ascendancy”). The last album was more of an emo metalcore kind of album with very harsh vocals, but this album was a lot more thrash and they really have stepped up their skill levels in every way.
Final Thoughts
Trivium is a very consistent band. They seem to excel in basically everything they do, which kind of makes it difficult to write about the things that stand out to me, because it’s all so good. I am looking forward to tomorrow’s listening party!!