Live-Metal.Net - Interviews: Trivium

Bassist Paolo Gregoletto on In Waves, In Flames and the band’s FM radio breakthrough

Just months after the release of their fifth album, In Waves (Aug. 9, 2011), Trivium is on the verge of a major breakthrough. After opening the main stage of last year’s Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival and then touring Europe with In Flames, the band returned to the U.S. to find its single “Built to Fall” climbing the charts of FM radio. Trivium then hooked up with In Flames again for a U.S. tour, even playing acoustic sets for radio along the way and giving the headliners a run for their money each night. At the tour’s stop at Rams Head Live in Baltimore, Md., Live Metal’s Jeff Maki talked with bassist Paolo Gregoletto about the success of In Waves, the band’s relationship with In Flames and early plans for the next Trivium record.

LIVE METAL: So you guys just did an acoustic show (for Baltimore's 98 Rock)? How do you transition the music acoustically? Is it just a matter of unplugging and going for it, or is there a whole different style to it?

PAOLO GREGOLETTO: Some songs stick without having to transpose them for an acoustic set, but for “Built to Fall,” we kind of changed it up a little bit and slowed it down. When we (originally) played the really heavy version (acoustically), it kind of sounded clunky with all the stops—sometimes it just doesn’t translate as well. But sometimes it works—the “Iron Maiden” cover we played works pretty much true to form.

I wanted to talk about In Flames now a little bit. Between the recent European tour and now this North American tour, Trivium has spent a whole lot of time with In Flames, obviously. We know you guys are fans from what I’ve read and what we’ve seen in the press, but just what is the relationship like? Do you see them as peers or more like father figures or idols?

Musically, I wouldn’t say we’re peers because they’re already a legendary band and they definitely have the back catalog to back that up. And (Sounds of a Playground Fading) is great. As people, we’re just really good friends and we’re very similar. We’re both easy-going bands and like to have fun, and it’s just cool to tour with your friends. And I think we’re going to continue doing a couple of tours with them later this year—maybe do some stuff in Asia and for Soundwave because we’re both on that.

I even have seen where (vocalist/guitarist) Matt (Heafy) stated that “there would be no Trivium without In Flames.” So what was the main influence that In Flames had on the band musically?

I think, for Matt, those first couple of In Flames albums definitely influenced his writing. Ember to Inferno definitely showed clear signs of the “Gothenburg sound.” When I was young, I was really into Soilwork, and that’s how I discovered In Flames. And I think the same for (guitarist) Corey (Beaulieu)—we were all kind of in to that Gothenburg thing. And with Ascendancy, it’s the same thing. There are some of those Gothenburg-type elements in our music. The new wave of American heavy metal was really directly influenced from the Gothenburg scene. And it’s cool that we have the mixing of all these kind of different scenes. There are just so many links.

As we have talked about, In Flames has already cemented their place in the genre of heavy metal, but do you think Trivium has yet to do this or are you still striving for this?

I think we’re out of the “new band phase” now that we have five albums. But I think that kind of just comes in time to become that type of band, like In Flames or Machine Head. Those are bands that I feel that within the last couple of albums have gone from not only just being great metal bands, but to being legendary in their own right. And we don’t view ourselves in that way because it’s something that will come in time. I don’t know if people see us that way, and it’s hard to say if they will or will not. But we’re definitely planning to stick around for awhile. If we keep putting out albums that people like and that they can get into, then we’re getting there, I think.

Having just returned from Europe, are there any major differences in the shows you played over there and the first few over here on this tour so far?

In Europe, In Flames was headlining; but in the U.K., we headlined. And in Europe, it was a newer crowd for us. It was really young and not really the same as the mainstream here. Mainstream in Europe with these festivals like Rock am Ring are mostly rock and heavy stuff. But it was just a lot of kids and a younger audience. And the Scandinavian shows were just massive—their hometown show was like 9,000 people. It was fun for us and opened us up to a whole lot of people. Europe has kind of turned around for us. It’s really becoming a good spot for us to tour.

In the U.K,. you can blow up on like one album, like we did with Ascendancy, but with Europe it takes time. You have to kind of earn the respect, but that’s cool because when you do get those fans with you, they’re there until the end. You see a band like Saxon still touring over there and still drawing thousands of people. And every Christmastime, Motorhead is doing the same tour, but it always sells out. So there’s got to be something said about that.

I saw you guys on the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival this past summer, and I thought the crowd response was one of the best I’ve ever seen for an opening main-stage band. Being a veteran of the festival now, what are your best memories and would that be something you would play again even?

Oh yeah, we’ll definitely do it again, but not this next one. But it was awesome for us because it was a new chance for us to introduce ourselves to a lot of people that haven’t heard about Trivium. But we’re so prepared to play festivals like that now. It’s nice to go into a situation where people don’t know you, but you’ve also had the experience, and we know how to handle ourselves on a bigger stage and we know what to do. And to play before Megadeth, we were stepping up to a different league. We’re not on that level yet, but it was a chance for us to prove that we can hang up there with those bigger bands.

Now that In Waves has been out for awhile, would you say that this is your most successful album so far?

I think worldwide, it has been the biggest and most well-received. We’re just focused on getting out to new people, and it’s been a great opportunity. Like being out with In Flames, we have gotten to so many new people. Wacken Open Air was insane, and that was a milestone for us to play that festival. And even on this tour, we ask the crowd every night, “Who has never seen Trivium?” and some nights it’s more than 50 percent, and some nights it’s even 70 percent. It’s crazy. People know our songs but either just haven’t seen us or have just now gotten into us, and then there are the older fans. So it’s always a constant cycle of bringing in new people.

[Editor’s note: Wacken Open Air 2011 was held from Aug. 4 to 6. The festival was headlined by Judas Priest, Ozzy Osbourne, Motörhead, Airbourne and Sepultura. Trivium played the Double Main Stage, Friday, Aug. 5]

You already mentioned that you’re going to tour even more with In Flames, but are you just going to tour on In Waves until you can’t go any longer? What cycle are you in for the touring of this album?

We have pretty much a set kind of plan for how long we’re going to tour. I think it will take us up to the end of this year—into December or around then is probably when we’ll stop. Unless something really massive like Slipknot wants to do a tour, then we’ll consider continuing the tour cycle, but I think that we’ll finish up by then, probably over in Europe.

We’ve already kind of starting conceptualizing what the next album is going to be. Just from past experiences, we’ve learned that the better prepared you are and the more you talk about it in advance, then the smoother everything goes. You really end up doing the album you want to do and everything comes out right. That’s how In Waves felt for us because we had so much time, yet we used it all. It’s awesome to look back and say that we wouldn’t change anything about the art, we wouldn’t change anything about the songs, and it’s refreshing. (laughs)

Is it also important to ride your current success and in this day and age to get another album out there as soon as possible?

Yeah, it’s all about momentum. If you’ve got momentum coming off an album, then you definitely should. We took a year off after Shogun and it was just time for us to take a break. There was no necessary rush for us to get out and be hitting the road for like three years.

This album, to me, is building that momentum back up or us. We got (drummer) Nick (Augusto) in the band and we’re tighter than we’ve ever been live. So it’s building that momentum and getting all these new people into us and doing all these tours that are a little out of the box, like (our tour with) Dream Theater, the Asking Alexandria run that we’re about to do, and so on. Now we’re starting to get into this radio world, which is another animal all together.

Now that you guys have broken through with the song “Built to Fall” on FM radio, are you going to try and follow this with future songs or recordings?

Yeah, the next song that is going to come out is “Black.” It will be the next single sometime in February. It’s a weird thing. We’ve never really experienced that world, and it’s so different from the world that we kind of come from. (Our world) was just touring—that’s what it is. You just tour, get word of mouth, do interviews and metal sites cover you and get the word out, but you don’t really just get radio. It takes a while and you got to hammer it in there.

But for us, what we’re thinking for the next record is that we’re not going to go in and write for radio. We want to make this record that fits together and is just really intense—it’s hard to say now, but I think it’s really going to be more intense than In Waves overall. And that’s just the goal for right now. We just want something that from start to finish is the perfect album.

I saw a lot of things in the press regarding In Waves about the band saying you just wanted “to be yourselves” on this album. Trivium has, of course, been compared to other bands in the past, like Metallica. but if you don’t think you were “yourselves” in the past, then who were you trying to be?

I think that meant that when we’re writing riffs, that we’re not trying to please certain people. We don’t have to write these riffs because the metal-elitist people will like this, or we need to write this, or we need to write that. We were just kind of having fun again writing after all the stuff we had been through with (former drummer) Travis (Smith), and the stuff the band was kind of going through during the past couple of years. Now it’s fun to play again, and we love to hang out and jam, and that’s what’s important. That’s what being ourselves is all about when we go in and write like that, not worrying about what anyone else wants us to do. At this point, I just want to write stuff that I want to hear and gets me pumped up and stuff.

What do you think has been the biggest high and biggest low for Trivium at this point in your career?

I guess the biggest low would be us parting with Travis. I think from The Crusade kind of to that point, we went through so many things that were so great, that internally we were just kind of on this slope downward ,and it was getting worse and worse. Even though we would do something great like the Download Festival or sell out a tour, behind the scenes we weren’t feeling that high. We weren’t really able to enjoy the success we were having. So hitting rock bottom was when we had to part ways with him. It just wasn’t going smooth, and there were probably a lot of clichés and stuff. Some people’s hearts just weren’t that into it.

And now the highest high is that we did In Waves and we survived going through what ends bands sometimes. We came out a stronger band, a better band live and on record. And we know what we are now with a drummer like Nick. We’ve really seen that there’s so much more potential now for our music. We started jamming with Nick a week after we got home from the last tour Travis did with us, then we had two weeks to get ready for the next leg of the tour. And with Nick, he had never listened to our stuff, so for him to step up and play a headlining set, what he did was crazy. It was crazy and it was fun again. Everyone’s eyes just really opened to that, and it makes a big, big difference. Because if you do anything right, it’s just fun—it ain’t work.

Great. Well, I’m glad to hear it. I’ve had In Waves playing ever since it came out last August, and I’m looking forward to seeing you guys tonight. Anything else you want to add?

Thank you to anyone that’s got the album. Come out to one of our shows, and if you haven’t, we’ll be touring all year so check the dates.