Band's List Metalcore Trivium Ascendancy

Ascendancy hit the #151 spot on the US Billboard 200 chart. In the UK it reached #78 and went gold with over 100,000 copies sold. This is the second album from this American Metalcore quartet. According to the Merriam- Webster dictionary, Ascendancy means a controlling influence or domination. The album art is supposed to depict an angel.

This album has a lot of the explosiveness of their first album(Ember to Inferno) but has a different sound. It shows some influence from Dream Theater, with some of the guitar solo's and vocal styles.

Vocalist Matt Heafy retains his fugue style of singing between his intense yelling and his very nice singing style. The guitar and bass playing demonstrate some of the finest thrashing and shredding, that you can find in a metalcore album. The guitars have expanded their range to a flashier style, that is very prevalent in progressive metal. The drum playing of Travis Smith is very fast and skilled.

Rain thrashes nicely, with a catchy melody, it contains some very glittery(like Ritchie Blackmore of Rainbow) guitar hooks. It's about the pressures and problems that people face in their lives. Pull Harder on the Strings of Your Martyr Thrashes intensely and this has an uplifting rock refrain. Drowned And Torn Trivium thrashes with nice melodic interludes. It's about an aggressive rebellion against oppression. Ascendancy is another great song, not only does it thrash, but it has a very nice rhythm, it's about rising up from defeat. Like Light to the Flies is another great song, check out the video, that I've selected for this review. The Deceived is an awesome jam. It's very intense and thrashes at a very fast tempo. The demo version was released on the previous album(Ember to Inferno). Suffocating Sight is an intense thrash song, with a lot of melody. Departure is a halfway descent thrash song in comparison to the great songs toward the beginning of this album. Although the technical expertise of the guitars on this song, sound as glittery as a firework display, I think that this song is boring.

This definitely is a great album, but I think that Ember to Inferno, is a little bit better. Because it's more intense. The balance of this album goes towards the pretty side too much. But this must be a very popular album, because I-Tunes charges 30 cents more for each song on this album, than they charge for Metallica songs. Metallica has sold a lot more albums than Trivium. I bought my copy used at a local record store for 8 bucks, a couple of years ago. This was my first Trivium album. Fans of Shadows Fall and Demon Hunter will love this album.

Ascendancy, as the name suggests has been a shift of fortunes for Trivium. They can easily say that this has to be one their best works till date. Starting with the song 'Rain', which reminds you of other Metalcore bands with a taste of Thrash Metal based riffs with melodic parts incorporated to deliver a punch. The melodic section is clean with good progressions overall. Pull Harder on the Strings of Your Martyr which is the third song of the album delivers to its billing with fantastic progressions throughout the song. The song delivers till the end with good clean guitar solos considering the band has twin lead guitarists. The fifth song of the album is 'Ascendancy' which is the title track for the album. The song is reminiscent (and in future would actually represent) of the metalcore genre in a lot of ways where the breakdowns and progressions are complicated and are thrash based with incorporation of melodic riffs in between. Again the progressions on the song are good along with melodic section, having clean vocals, thus delivering at its best. The sixth song, 'A Gunshot to the head of.....' is an interesting song with lot of Thrash influences and melodic riffs incorporated into an amalgamation of the two. The other songs ('Dying in Your Arms' and 'Like Light to the Flies') too sound highly influenced by earlier thrash metal bands although the melodic sections in these two songs . The thing that sets out this album to Trivium's others, is the tempo and melodic verses in the songs. On a whole this is just a sniff of the talent that we have seen from Trivium. There is more in the bag to come.