{"id":350655,"date":"2025-11-02T16:08:45","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T16:08:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/350655\/"},"modified":"2025-11-02T16:08:45","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T16:08:45","slug":"triviums-matt-heafy-talks-new-ep-struck-dead-bullet-for-my-valentine-and-fighting-elitism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/350655\/","title":{"rendered":"Trivium’s Matt Heafy talks new EP ‘Struck Dead’, Bullet For My Valentine and fighting elitism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trivium<\/a>\u2019s Matt Heafy has spoken to NME about the band\u2019s new \u2013 and first \u2013 EP, \u2018Struck Dead\u2019<\/a>, pivoting plans after their co-headline world tour with Bullet For My Valentine<\/a> fell apart, standing up for Sleep Token<\/a> against elitism, video games and more.<\/p>\n

The EP \u2013 out now via Roadrunner Records \u2013 marks their fourth and final collection of songs with drummer Alex Bent, who joined the band in 2017. NME\u2019s chat with Heafy took place before Bent\u2019s seemingly amicable departure<\/a> \u2013 Sepultura<\/a>\u2018s Greyson Nekrutman stepped in to fill in on drums for one show.<\/p>\n

They\u2019ve since tapped ex-Whitechapel sticksman Alex R\u00fcdinger for their North American headlining tour with Jinjer<\/a> and Heriot<\/a>, which kicked off last week. R\u00fcdinger has also been confirmed to join Trivium\u2019s writing and recording sessions for their upcoming 11th album in 2026.<\/p>\n

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While on the way to the band\u2019s headquarters-cum-studio built in an airplane hangar for a writing session, frontman Heafy revealed to NME that the new three-track collection came \u201cout of necessity\u201d after their co-headlining tour with Bullet For My Valentine fell apart \u2013 something they\u2019ve maintained was entirely Bullet\u2019s decision<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Check out NME\u2019s chat with Trivium\u2019s Matt Heafy below, where he tells us about progress on album 11, pushing back against elitism to crown Sleep Token a metal band, the loss of Ozzy Osbourne<\/a>, and getting the feeling that he\u2019s in a Christopher Nolan<\/a> movie.<\/p>\n

NME: Hey Matt! How did you land on the idea of releasing an EP rather than singles or wait for a full album?<\/b><\/p>\n

Matt Heafy:<\/strong> \u201cInitially, we had planned for \u2018The Poisoned Ascendancy\u2019 tour with Bullet For My Valentine going from January until December<\/a>. Obviously that was something we wanted to carry out and that was something we made very clear.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey decided to veer off and change the plans and to pull off a co-headliner, it takes two to tango. This EP was originally meant to be a full-length. So when everything happened with Bullet, we had to pivot. We had our crew who had been locked in for the whole year and we didn\u2019t want to cancel the tour and leave them jobless. The tour was originally supposed to be leg two of the North American \u2018Poisoned Ascendancy\u2019 run. We found out that they basically weren\u2019t going to do it about three to five days before leg one happened \u2013 it was an abrupt shock.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we came up with this new tour with Jinjer<\/a> and Heriot<\/a>. We recalibrated these plans and we\u2019ve turned the songs into an EP out of necessity, which ended up being a good thing because we\u2019re now able to write a whole different set of songs for record 11 and that\u2019s coming along incredibly. It\u2019s actually quite different from the EP.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Paolo said that you poured a lot of your personal struggles from that time period into the songwriting process\u2026\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cLast year, before the \u2018Ascendancy\u2019 run, I had a mental breakdown of sorts as we were rehearsing and preparing for the tour. It was this big culmination of things and during this spiral, I was looking at the \u2018Ascendancy\u2019 lyrics and going, \u2018Man, I\u2019m still feeling these same things from 20 years ago. Why have I not progressed from this? Why have I not learned and grown from this?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI started working with a psychiatrist, a behavioural therapist, a licensed mental health councillor. All the stuff that I have done with jiu jitsu, yoga, family, friends, food \u2013 it ended up not being enough. So I had to go very hard into what was going on with my brain and rebuild my mind, and right before, during and right after 2024 were these three songs. if someone were to dig into these lyrics, these were written during the height of this downward spiral and mental breaking that is me at 38-years-old.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone knows me as this really busy guy that does a lot of things but I\u2019ve since found a very healthy, moderate way of doing things. I basically now only focus on Trivium, myself and my family. The only other thing I\u2019m working on right now is this awesome side-scroller, cyberpunk, futuristic Japanese video game that my friend, myself and two designers are making.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the approach to album 11 like, since you\u2019ve mentioned it\u2019s quite different from the EP?<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cWith \u2018The Crusade\u2019, it was my decision to go, \u2018Let\u2019s rebel against everything we\u2019ve ever done\u2019. With \u2018Vengeance Falls\u2019, our producer was like: \u2018Let\u2019s hone in on this specific area of your sound\u2019. \u2018Silence In The Snow\u2019 was us tapping into the influence of our heroes, all of whom performed predominantly in clean singing. Basically every single record besides that, we got in a room and we made whatever felt good.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not calling out those three albums as a fact that I don\u2019t like them \u2013 I love those records \u2013 but they\u2019re probably some of my least favourite as a whole. But with the rest, if you look at \u2018The Sin And The Sentence\u2019, \u2018What The Dead Men Say\u2019 and \u2018In The Court Of The Dragon\u2019, we made whatever happened organically. The same thing happened with the \u2018Struck Dead\u2019 EP. Paolo set this rule for the band where we only write together in The Hangar as a band. No demos, no laptop demos, no midi demos.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we knew we were releasing \u2018Struck Dead\u2019 as an EP, we thought: \u2018This caps off a great writing period. If we\u2019re stopping the Ascendancy tour early, what are we going to write for record 11?\u2019 So we got in the room and whatever we wrote with that mentality ended up becoming something very different.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis time we\u2019ve found that the seven strings are calling back to us. I don\u2019t want to say too early what record 11 is sounding like but it\u2019s still us and it\u2019s still an amalgamation of the best features of records one through 10, and the EP. We\u2019re already booking festivals for May through July, some of the best slots we\u2019ve ever had, so you should be able to hear something from that record by then.\u201d<\/p>\n

You often credit films and video games that influence your music. Were there any projects that impacted the new EP?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cThis question makes me think of the directors that were so influential to me: Lars Von Trier, Christopher Nolan, Nicolas Winding Refn, David Lynch<\/a>. It\u2019s almost like we\u2019re in a Nolan movie and went back in time. Kind of like Tenet and I was watching that a lot, but I wouldn\u2019t say it necessarily influenced \u2018Struck Dead\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith \u2018Struck Dead\u2019, it was almost like we took a time machine back 20 years, and we were in the headspace of \u2018Ascendancy\u2019 again, except this time we had all the experience that we needed to have to create something that was almost a direct lineage of that album 20 years on.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s sort of the best way to think about it. It makes me think of Tenet, and this anime Steins;Gate. I got to relive where I was as an 18-year-old, depressed and angry at the world and myself, and then coming back as an adult who\u2019s a father and has grown from them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Trivium in the studio recording \u2018Struck Dead\u2019. Credit: Press<\/p>\n

During your headlining set at Bloodstock, you championed Sleep Token as a metal band through and through<\/a> and pushed back against elitism\u2026<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s crazy that it\u2019s still a thing in 2025, but it\u2019s definitely not as bad as it used to be. I remember back in the day, I had glass bottles thrown at my head when we were supporting bands \u2013 there\u2019d be people waiting outside of our van wanting to fight us because they didn\u2019t like our music. I had some of my favourite bands in the world tell me how much we sucked and called me every word in the book that you could never say to anyone in the face today.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s unfortunately still around, and it\u2019s good that it\u2019s lessened \u2013 and for us, I\u2019m so glad I was able to make that speech. The truth of the matter is III\u2019s [of Sleep Token<\/a>] first metal show ever was a Trivium show, his first metal record was \u2018Ascendency\u2019 and so he was someone who grew up with Trivium. For me, metal is an attitude, it\u2019s a lifestyle. I\u2019ve seen where Sleep Token\u2019s come from. I\u2019ve seen the work they\u2019ve had to do and their incredibly meteoric rise to success to become one of the biggest bands in the world right now. They take metal, pop, some darkness and they mix it all into who they are.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are moments when I\u2019ll listen to a Hans Zimmer<\/a> song and go \u2018that\u2019s metal\u2019, the Attack On Titan<\/a> soundtrack to me is metal. Metal is a feeling, it\u2019s a state of mind. Like it or not, Sleep Token have brought more people into the world of metal and opened up people\u2019s eyes to what metal can be.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

You\u2019re touring the US with Heriot \u2013 what has drawn you to the band?<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first heard Heriot<\/a>, I was blown away by the ferocity and the aggression. And then to find out Debbie is the front-person, I was like \u2018This is so amazing\u2019. My wife loves Heriot. There are people who are more excited to see Heriot than us, and I think that\u2019s so cool. And then to find out that Heriot even liked our band for a minute, then finding out they were influenced by us and they\u2019d seen us back in the day \u2013 that\u2019s all we could ever want. That\u2019s the biggest thing in the world; when I find out a band that I\u2019m into likes us or maybe was influenced by us, that\u2019s the biggest compliment in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve had great success with covers \u2013 both on record and clips from the band jamming backstage. Would Trivium ever consider recording a covers album? Who\u2019d be on it?\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve talked about it before. I want to, but I think now that we\u2019ve been posting our Pig Pen jams, we\u2019re able to pull off so many more that way than on a record. You\u2019ve got Trivium covering System Of A Down<\/a>, Avenged Sevenfold<\/a>, No Doubt<\/a>, we can just keep going. A covers record would be super cool though, hypothetically I\u2019d want to show off just how insane our breadth of musical inspiration is. Bands like The Offspring<\/a>, Blink-182<\/a>, Emperor, Cannibal Corpse<\/a>, Death, Sepultura \u2013 we can kind of do it all.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a clip of the band jamming to <\/b>Kpop Demon Hunters<\/b><\/a>\u2026<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cDude, I love that movie so much. My kids love it. Every day during the last tour, I listened to it maybe five to 10 times. I love that album. I want to cover \u2018Your Idol\u2019, and we\u2019re about to do \u2018Take Down\u2019 soon, so I don\u2019t know, maybe keep an eye out for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"Trivium with ex-drummer Alex Bent (leftmost). Credit: Press<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve dabbled in composing music for video games.<\/a>\u00a0What can you tell us about the new game you\u2019re working on?<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m doing a little bit of development. I\u2019m working with my friend Kendall Davis.\u00a0He\u2019s worked on Halo<\/a> and stuff like that so he wrote the story for the game we\u2019re working on, but I would kind of pitch a couple of ideas to him. On the scoring front, for this game alone I\u2019ve written 95 songs across the last three years that we have to streamline to 30. It\u2019s a mix of electronic, industrial, metal, Japanese traditional, weird trap beats and all of these strange elements.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s somewhere between all of my influences like Ludwig G\u00f6ransson, Hans Zimmer and Hiroyuki Sawano from Attack On Titan. It\u2019s a side-scroller, which is something that\u2019s so nostalgic. Sure, the 100 to 500 hour games are cool, but I want something that I can just play for a bit, put down, carry on with life, then pick it up again with no problem like Castlevania or Mega Man. It\u2019s called Kunoichi and it\u2019s from a four-man studio consisting of myself, Kendall and two insane developers.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve lost a couple of metal icons recently \u2013 like Ozzy Osbourne<\/a> and Mastodon\u2019s Brent Hinds<\/a>\u2026<\/b><\/p>\n

\u201cThinking about the fact that Ozzy\u2019s not around anymore is totally nuts. Brent is one of those guys who was super cool to us as the years went on, but at Ozzfest in 2005, he rode us hard. He showed us what it meant to be cocky 18-year-olds who thought we were cooler than everyone else. We had a show in Paris a few years after and he came over to my dressing room with an acoustic guitar with him and played for me. It was nuts and our bond was always full of love after that.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut thinking about the icons we\u2019ve lost like Alexi Laiho<\/a>, Dio<\/a>, Chuck Schuldiner, Paul Gray<\/a>, Joey Jordison<\/a>\u2026 it\u2019s important that we keep bearing the torch. That\u2019s why people take this genre so seriously, I see people that come from this and how it\u2019s given so many of us everything we\u2019ve wanted out of life. Through metal I met my wife, had my two incredible kids, everything with Trivium, found my love for food and jiu jitsu, all of the friends I\u2019ve made. It all came from the genre that I love so we\u2019re going to keep protecting the lineage and keep talking about our heroes and paying tribute to these bands and icons that we love.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trivium\u2019s new EP \u2018Struck Dead\u2019 is out now via Roadrunner Records. For tickets to their headline North America tour with Jinger and Heriot, click here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

For further help and advice on mental health:<\/b>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n