VINCE CATCHES UP WITH TRIVIUM’S MATT HEAFY

Having recently spoken with Trivium’s Matt Heafy and Corey Beaulieu, we hadn’t scheduled an interview with the band during our trip to scary Camden, NJ for this year’s Rockstar Mayhem Festival. But upon arriving we ran into Heafy in the lobby, and since he was between interviews at the moment we decided to roll the tape and do a quick impromptu update interview. And not for nothin’, Heafy’s such a nice guy, a great interviewee, and his band’s set was one of the most energetic of the day.

Heafy told us about how the Rockstar Mayhem Tour had been going for them so far, the karaoke and dance music parties that have ensued after hours, the band’s upcoming touring plans, and the songs he’s been working on for the next Trivium album. Our quick chat, after the jump.

So how has the tour going thus far?

This has been, without a doubt, the most fun tour I’ve ever been on… ever. It’s crazy. I normally hang out amongst people I know and stuff, but this tour has really brought me out in a great way to hang out with people. I think it has done something good for me. The shows are incredible. We didn’t know they’d be this good. I think they’re even better thanks to the Slipknot tour. It’s like extra people are coming out to see us from that tour. Also, every other day there will be a party hosted by a band or something. The other night, Black Dahlia had karaoke night, and Behemoth had a corpsepaint party. God Forbid threw a party. We had one where we did jungle juice. It was like 16 gallons of everclear liquor that you could get and all this fruit and Hawaiian Punch and stuff, and we just played dance music all night. There were 300 people from the biggest metal tour of the year fucking dancing to club music. It’s been amazing.

I have to know, what’s your karaoke song?

I don’t do karaoke. I suck at it. I don’t have the range for it. My range is going lower and lower as my balls descend further and further.

What are some choice karaoke performances?

Anything Bon Jovi I guess. I heard some dude do the English version of Rammstein. That was kind of neat.

Was there any sort of surprise? Like, Nergal does a mean Bruce Springsteen or something like that?

No. Unfortunately I didn’t see anyone from the tour do it. It was amazing how stoked people are for fucking club music on a metal tour, though. After hearing and playing metal all day, it’s kind of nice to get a break from that. It’s really cool that people were hanging out and having a good time. We had name tags and Mardi Gras beads. It was also John Reese’s — the guy who puts on this tour — birthday that day. So it was really just a good time. Then when we were in Scranton and so we threw a tent party. It was raining all day, so we hooked up 6 tents in the rain and made another batch of jungle juice in a bucket and just had dance music playing. We had like 150 people under our tents then. It’s really just people from the tour and some people from around [like us. We attended the God Forbid “ghetto” party later that night. -Ed.]

The crew and . . .

Yeah. The crew on this tour is so cool. They’re so good to us. They’re so nice to us. The vibe is great. We knew most of the bands beforehand, so it’s really good to hang out with people we didn’t know and meet new people. I was really stoked to see Whitechapel and meet them. We’re bringing them out on a couple of tours. They’re really cool guys.

How have the turnouts been?

Incredible. I’m so stoked that we’re doing a parking lot area too because a couple of thousand people always looks amazing. We’re playing in a fold-out semi trailer thing, so we brought absolutely nothing. We brought no backdrops, no scrims, I brought one cab, a head, and a guitar. So it’s really punk rock, but it’s going over so well. Typically, it would be about 5 to 10 thousand people a day.

Wow.

Which is really good.

That’s awesome.

Yeah.

How long of a set do you guys do?

We get 30 minutes, so knowing our songs, it’s only 5 songs.

Are you guys playing the same set every day?

Yeah, we’re playing the same set every day. I would like to switch it up, but the set is so balanced, it’s perfect for people who are longtime fans, but it’s also perfect for people who are kind of newer to us. It’s got a couple of the hits and stuff that’s easily translatable live. There are certain styles of music and certain songs that don’t translate to open-air stages. We just stuck to stuff that people can understand.

Are you mostly doing new stuff?

We’re doing 2 songs off of Ascendancy, 2 songs off of Shogun, and a song off of Ember, our first record.

So what else is going on with you guys? Are you going out with Whitechapel?

Yeah, we got lots going on. We’ve been writing a lot for the next record. As soon as this tour is over, we’ve got about a month off. The tour is Trivium, Whitechapel, Darkest Hour, Dirge Within. Then we’ve got about 2 weeks off, and then we do another tour of “Assault North America” which is: Trivium, Chimaira, Whitechapel, and Dirge Within. We weren’t supposed to announce it, but we’re going to announce it anyway.

It’s going to be a few weeks before we get this up anyway.

Yeah, we’ve been announcing it on stage and stuff. So then we got those back to back. I think we’re doing 63 dates, which is insane, but I’m stoked on it. Then we got January off, February we do Australia/Asia/U.K./Europe, then we take a break off and start doing the next record. We got about 30 songs written down roughly.

Do you have a ProTools rig on the bus?

I’ve been using Apple Logic which I’m absolutely in love with. What’s amazing about Apple Logic is that you can do synthetic guitars. So I’ve been doing full Trivium songs: drums, guitar, guitar, vocal, and I put piano and bass guitar. It’s purely all digital. I haven’t had to use a real guitar at all. It’s stuff that I write beforehand, and then I transpose on this because it’s easier because I don’t have to bring my guitar in. It sounds real convincing. You pick your guitar tone, what kind of guitar body, what kind of amp, and you do all kinds of different stuff. I love it man. Just the other day on Logic I programmed (I don’t have any classical music training or theory, but I always wanted to make a classical music song) one yesterday on the day off. It was a lot of fun. Logic has these templates where you can pick [for example] an electronic song, or country song, and I picked a classical song and you get all the instruments you need to make a symphony. So I was able to do a full symphonic song.

Might any symphonic stuff make it on the next Trivium record?

Probably an intro and outro. I’m thinking of someday making a side project thing where I do every style of music ever and make fake band names/fake record labels. Like Tomorrow is Monday, my emo band from Orange County I do when I’m 16. My black metal band is Ocular Symfernum which means “the eye of hell”.

Maybe they can do a tour with Lake Bukkake.

That’d be awesome! Sweet. I like porno grind.

-VN