Words & Photo: The Captain

It’s a Thursday night and I’m in Glasgow to see Trivium for the second time. I’ve only ever been in Glasgow once before for a gig and I’ve never been in this venue so I’m rather excited to see what the night will bring. We are city 5/7 on the UK & Ireland leg of their “Silence in the Snow” tour.

I’ll be honest, I’m normally more of a pop/ambient instrumental/folk/light rock kind of person, but with Trivium I make an exception. They are, pardon my potty mouth, fucking awesome! Of course, any band can sound good on record, but not every band can move this sound over to the live stage. Trivium are one of the bands that do this EXCEPTIONALLY well.

The stage is set and the crowd is warmed up. Then…”Run to the Hills” by Iron Maiden blasts through the speakers. Every fan knows: The band are going to hit the stage as soon as the last note of that song flows into the room. We’re in Scotland so of course the crowd starts chanting “HERE WE, HERE WE, HERE WE FUCKING GO” as the first notes of “The End of Everything” instrumental song sounds which flows perfectly into their first song “Rain”. It’s loud, it’s awesome, it’s braw (that’s a Scottish term for good for those of you not familiar with the term). Every song is perfectly executed and Matt Heafy is great with the crowd. The whole band has an incredible stage presence. At one point he talks to us about the “here we, here we, here we fucking go” chant. He suggests that we change it to “TRIVI-TRIVI-TRVIFUCKING-UM” because that sounds really cool (and it does work too, well done Matt).

Matt takes great care to make sure everyone has fun, but is also safe. The last time I saw them (Kilmarnock , 2016) he actually stopped the whole show in the middle of a song because he noticed that someone had been knocked down in a mosh pit. He made sure the person was picked up and checked before he started the show again.

Trivium are, quite honestly, one of the best bands I’ve ever seen live and I’ve been to a lot of live shows in my 23 years. If you don’t already listen to them, do so! Even if you’re not a big metal fan, do it! Do it, do it do it. I promise you you won’t regret it. They’re currently on the European leg of their tour, check their Facebook for dates.