Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
If one band was going to give Black Sabbath a run for their well established and seemingly unassailable position as producing the best Heavy Metal album from an American or British band then really Trivium and their brutally astonishing, captivating and hard edged album Vengeance Falls could well be the only serious contender.
If the album was lying on the mortuary table, attacked by the those who believe music should be pre-packaged and run as an insidious weekly competition, it would take more than Sarah Connor armed with the knowledge of how to bring down a Terminator to cut through the metal that holds this titan together. It seems there are metal albums and then there are groups that really understand what it means to get the little hairs on the back of the arm to rise; for the trepidation to come, of the heralded anticipation that flows through the genre’s blood, the steel in which makes the musicians and the album sound like an explosion in a foundry. Vengeance Falls surveys the wreckage and blissfully walks on.
Perhaps half the battle with a great metal album is too have a producer who really gets the group’s purpose to dominate the ear drum and with Disturbed’s David Draiman giving the band it seems every tug on the leash when needed and the freedom to really let go at other times, it has bought out the very best in their work.
From the outset, Matt Heafy, Corey Beaulieu, Paulo Gregoletto and Nick Augustus combine to make the tracks ooze piston oil, the very grease that makes wheels turn and the ironworks hum. Tracks such as Brave This Storm, To Believe, the heart wrenching Through Blood And Dirt And Bone the pounding bitterness of No Hope For The Human Race and Skulls…We Are 138 go on the rampage and take no musical prisoners. No holds barred, all moves legal, Trivium set out to rule the roost with these songs.
Vengeance Falls will surely be looked upon as one of the great Metal albums of 2013, a cacophony that builds and builds until the very last breathe, leaving the listener exhausted but completely sated.
Ian D. Hall