I’ve been going through the ol’ discography in preparation for CITG, and I think that I have discovered just what fact, for me, separates the all-time greats from the remainder of their already incredibly consistent catalogue.
When I think of Trivium’s best songs, some examples that come to mind from each album over the years (with lots of omissions) are:
When All Light Dies
Declaration
Shogun
Caustic Are The Ties That Bind
Thrown Into The Fire
Catastrophist
Like a Sword Over Damocles
What all these songs, and more, have in common, in my mind, is that their bridges do a lot of work in rounding out the compositions in ways that elevate them. Whether it’s a total sub-composition like Shogun, Caustic, or Catastrophist or rather a really, really expansive and winding instrumental exploration like Thrown into the Fire or Damocles, it’s these songs that feel the most “complete” and satisfying.
Conversely, I feel like throughout the years we have some examples of bridges that aren’t as involved in comparison, and as such leave the songs at that just “very good” stage. In fact, a lot of Silence in the Snow was like this- with just a couple of lines (Blind, Void), and this extended further into songs like Scattering The Ashes.
My primary comparison is the two new singles versus A Crisis of Revelation. If you directly compare the structure of the rest of these songs, they are indeed the standard verse-chorus vibe that 95% of Trivium’s songs have.
It’s the bridges that, in my mind, justify how Crisis feels like this whole, complete, justified composition and the new singles feel a bit lacklustre. Crisis has the standard sort of bridge with the “waiting for all of it to fall” section, but then blasts with a PERFECT left turn into the interlocking, weaving, tapping section that evolves with such a unique atmosphere. ITCOTD as a whole has a lot of these moments, which may explain why I find it to be my favourite album from the band, along with Shogun. The exact same can be said for Damocles- when you expect to go back into a prechorus/chorus, they hit you with an expansive musical composition that isn’t just a guitar solo trade off (though those are great).
The two new singles, in comparison, don’t feel like their bridges necessarily go anywhere other than a semi-obligatory solo section with some short lyrics. Crown in the Grave gets close- as Matt’s section after the second chorus is wonderfully atmospheric and cinematic- but the rest is very standard. Dead Inside of Me really is the bigger culprit here, as to me that bridge truly feels like nothing that elevates the song, even with Corey’s slick solo- and as such these songs sort of just become “fine”.
However, if they took a, say, What the Dead Men Say (title track) approach and expanded into an atmospheric and more involved section- then those catchy and accessible choruses become massive payoffs and releases of all the building tension a good bridge generates (Damocles is the BEST Trivium song for this reason, in my eyes).
What do you guys think of this little rambley thought?
