Trivium – What The Dead Men Say
Release Date: April 24, 2020 via Roadrunner Records
Interview with bassist – Paolo Gregoletto
Trivium is set to release their ninth studio album on April 24th. What The Dead Men Say is a ten song collection of songs that seems to make a statement of this is who we are, this is what we do and we do it well. In fact, if you combine the opening instrumental with the title track – like the band did on their official video, you can feel those prog rock influences with every musical movement. Oh and before the album officially gets released, go do yourself a favor and listen to ‘Catastrophist’. This is a good example of the bands ability as musicians and songwriters.
I spoke with bass player, Paolo Gregoletto about the new record and some of the production that went into the making of it. The album was produced by Josh Wilber and this was not the bands first time working with Josh. Paolo tells Sound Vapors, “It’s technically our third time because me mixed Silence In The Snow as well. He’s just a really, on the production and engineering side of stuff, just a really talented person. He’s worked on so many projects and so many different varying bands in rock and metal. He brings a ton of experience. He actually engineered under Andy Wallace. He helped him engineer his mixes, so he’s really got a depth of knowledge of everything and he brings a lot to the table.” Paolo tells me that they spent about 20 days or so tracking the album.
During these sessions, they tried a different approach in regards to the drum tracks. Paolo says, “We wrapped it up pretty quick in Orlando because we did everything first down there before we did drums. Which is the first time we ever did that. We recorded backwards, which was cool. It was kind of a trick that Josh used for like when he’s working with a band, where maybe he doesn’t have that much pre-production time. It allows him to turn the entire recording into pre-pro, where you can always change stuff until the very end when he records drums. Which is obviously a lot harder to change after the fact, after you’ve recorded. For us it was great and we got into the studio and just started tracking, pretty much a day or two after getting in there and it just went really, really fast.”
To be honest, on a melodic rock album I can see this being not so much of a problem for a professional drummer coming in and laying down drums over the already recorded music. But listening to these songs and the unique timing, starts and stops and progressive nature, it borders on insane how drummer Alex Bent was able to do what he’s done on this album.
I asked Paolo about Alex and with him being the bands’ fifth drummer, if it changes the bands groove at all when a new person comes in with their own personality behind the drum kit. Paolo says, “Each guys ability has all been different. Alex is the best drummer we’ve ever played with. His techniques. His ability to play pretty much anything and everything we throw at him. Whether it’s the new stuff or back catalog. A lot of times if it’s just getting guys up to speed on playing the set live and, you know, going into the studio it’s really.. every guy, is a different thing. Because everyone has different experience with the studio. Everyone is more comfortable or less comfortable, kind of depending on with you, being in the studio or how well you play to a click track. Every experience recording with a different drummer has been its own thing completely. We’ve had four different drummers on the records so it’s been four different experiences.”
Since these songs are so complex but different in their own way I wondered how the band approaches the writing process. Does someone bring in a lyric or maybe a riff? Paolo tells me, “It’s a mix for us because Matt, Corey and I all write the music for the band, like riff-wise. We’ll come in with a bunch of ideas. This time we decided that each person would pick their three strongest songs and we would come in and just work on those.” Paolo continues, “We would kind of go one at a time. We’d do three in one session. Three on another and three on another. And of course this record has ten because we split the intro and What The Dead Men Say apart even though they run together. It was a way to just really focus in on the details of everything.”
This process clearly works for the band.
You can hear my entire conversation with Paolo where we also talk about some of his favorite records, his favorite part of the music process and more. You can do this by clicking on the link to your favorite place to listen to podcasts or by watching the video version on YouTube.
-Tommy Marz
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