Trivium: All Albums Ranked Best to Worst!

For me, "Shogun" is Trivium's masterpiece. It's the perfect combination of catchy songs, mixed with brutal screaming, soft dynamics when appropriate, and screeching solos. The album itself is the most cohesive for listening to as a full album as well, from the light strumming that begins "Kirisute Gomen" to the epic ending with "Shogun". The key for "good Trivium" music, in my opinion, is the best mix of heavy and light. They are a band that exists in the middle...they fluctuate between sounding gentle and brutal, and getting that balance correct is sometimes difficult for them...but they nail it here. I think the band really hit their high point with this record, and it's definitely the one I'd give to a metal fan to judge them by.

The band was still fairly young when recording "Ascendancy", but it's the prefect second album for them. They evolved in style and substance since their debut album, started to define their "signature sound" with this record, and they still had that fresh passion to go all-in. It's brutal and catchy, and most of the songs are amazing...and are still played in concert to this day because people love them.

This follow-up to "Shogun" features not quite as many outstanding tracks, but the beginning of the album where "Capsizing the Sea" transitions into "In Waves" is SO epic. It's somewhat similar to "Shogun" in style, but the songs here tend to be a bit faster and less catchy. There's less full-album cohesion, but there's enough here to sink your teeth into.

This album is a welcome return to form after "Silence in the Snow". Many of the songs hearken back to their previous days, and their new drummer really goes all-out on this record. The title track is great, as are several others. However, even the best songs on the record tend to run a bit long, repeating the same passages over and over again, and some of the riffs seem oddly placed at times. If they had cut out maybe 1/4 of the extended passages in each song and tightened them up, I may have rated this above "In Waves". It's definitely worth listening to, and it gives me hope for the future of the band.

This is the band's debut, and with it you get a first glimpse at this fresh new energetic band. While they haven't fleshed out their sound here, they present a strong case for their metal chops on this album. The lyrics are a little basic, but the construction and execution of the dueling screaming and metal portions of the songs are rockin'.

(NOTE: If you want to listen to this album, be sure to get the 2016 remastered re-release, titled "Ab Initio", as the sound quality is much better and it's readily available for purchase everywhere, unlike the original album which has been out of print for years.)

I found this album to be somewhat "generic metal" sounding. I feel like they lost a bit of what makes them unique on this album. The band has always had a kind of "Metallica-esque" mode, when Matt sings a lot like James Hetfield and they kind of fall into that "Light Thrash" mode. This album is unfortunately dominated with songs like that...so while it's not particularly offensive, it's not a great example of what they're capable of either.

I'll never know how Trivium went from "Ascendancy" to this, and then to "Shogun", as this is kind of the black sheep of that quadrilogy. I kind of feel like they were flirting more with their artsy side on this album to see how far they could swing that direction, and it just ended up with a lot of songs that don't really flow very well or stick out very much. "Ascendancy" was harder, this album is softer...and their next album, "Shogun", ended up just right...so that's a good thing, I suppose!

No screaming. At all. That's about all I have to say about it, ha. This one came right after Matt blew out his voice and hadn't learned how to scream correctly yet, so they made it with Matt not screaming at all. It really strips half of their unique sound out of the band. This album feels a little bit like the softer parts of "Shogun", except every song is like that...all the way through. It definitely doesn't sound like the same Trivium from "Ascendancy", etc., and I think it went too far into the "light side" of their sound.