Trivium Day – Rory’s Ascendancy Celebration!

Trivium Day – Rory’s Ascendancy Celebration!
By Rory Bentley 

Can we all just take a moment to reflect on how upsetting it is that Trivium’s breakthrough classic “Ascendancy” is 20 years old! It feels like only yesterday I witnessed their triumphant Main Stage star-making Download set in 2005. I had stupid long hair and weighed about the same as the lunch I ate today, but although it was a lifetime away, I can still feel the adrenaline surge from my first of many live viewings of ‘Pull Harder On The Strings of Your Martyr’.

As a child of the late nineties and early noughties, I’m prone to a great deal of rose-tinted nostalgia on a lot of Rock and Metal releases that probably don’t deserve the reverence they get in the cold light of day (if you slag off Spineshank I’ll fuck you up, if you point out the obvious deficiencies in that first Dry Kill Logic album I’ll burn your house down etc..) but “Ascendancy” more than stands the test of time. Listening back for the first time in ages recently, I was struck by the staggering consistency of this thing. Front to back the whole thing slaps. Sure, you’ve got the obvious heavy hitters like ‘Dying In Your Arms’ and ‘Like Light To Flies’, but the deep cuts are just as strong. 

‘The Deceived’ would be the obvious hit on so many other albums, but it’s nuzzled away at track 9 like choruses and leads like that grow on trees. I’m pretty sure I subconsciously stole the chorus along with many other things in the Trivium catalog when I wrote vocal parts in my former band, and I’ll probably continue to plagiarise Heafy and the boys in my current band.

Perhaps the most rewarding impact of “Ascendancy”, however, is the way it turned my 19 year old brain onto the idea that multiple styles of Metal could coexist in the same song. The Death Metal stomp that gives way to the high octane Thrash and sludgy Hardcore beatdowns on ‘Suffocating Sight’ is just one of many examples of the Heavy Metal tapas course on display in the album. As much as I love a single-minded, blunt approach to my Metal (y’all know I give high scores to the most ignorant, thugged-out Hardcore on the reg), having a record that hits so many different spots is equally thrilling when executed to this magnificent standard. The stunning twin guitar battle on ‘A Gunshot To The Head of Trepidation’ effortlessly rubs shoulder with the Melodeath drama of ‘Rain’ which in turn sits perfectly alongside the angsty Metalcore on ‘Departure’, and all this from a band that were barely out of puberty!

For me the band would go onto even loftier heights (and a few lows) on later releases, improving each element of their sound over the next 20 years, but it all starts here. Sure Matt would go onto be a soaring baritone with a powerful vibrato, Alex Bent would eventually fill the Spinal Tap-esque revolving drum position that dogged the band until “The Sin and The Sentence”, and they would write loftier, more ambitious work like the mighty “Shogun”, but it all stems back to this stunning sophomore effort.

This year I’ll be catching the lads at Bloodstock for what will be at least my 10th Trivium show, and it may be the most excited I’ve been about seeing them. After being reliably informed that they bodied Bullet for My Valentine on the recent ‘Poisoned Ascendancy’ arena tour, the prospect of a few tasty deep cuts from the album spliced in with their finest latter day fodder is truly mouth-watering. For me Trivium have now established themselves as one of Metal’s finest bands, with enough great albums to go toe to toe with any classic artist, and “Ascendancy” is where that path to greatness begins.

Bonus rambling, my Trivium ranking goes-

1. Shogun
2. What The Dead Men Say
3. Ascendancy  
4. In The Court of The Dragon
5. The Sin and The Sentence
6. In Waves
7. Silence In The Snow
8. Ember To Inferno
9. Vengeance Falls
10. The Crusade (though half of the album is straight fire)

Merry Trivmas one and all!

Disclaimer: This article is solely the property of Rory Bentley and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this article, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.