This band has long occupied a special place among my favorites. Despite its young age at one time, Trivium managed to reach heights to which many groups move for decades. On each album there are not just great things, but hits, recognizable by all. But “Shogun”, in my opinion, is the best that guys have created in their careers right up to the last album.
First of all, I want to note the well-found sound and musical concept as a whole. Here band combined the best pieces of previous longplays: on “Shogun”, roughly equal parts of metalcore from the first two albums and elements of trash from “The Crusade”. Aforementioned albums created a kind of two camps of lovers and fans of the group: one wanted to continue the second release, while others admired the melodiousness of the third. "Shogun", in my opinion, attempted to combine two sides.
Atmosphere of material, despite its rather gloomy lyrics, is very pleasant and at the same time, has philosophical echoes. Comparing with the previous Trivium' work, nothing like that can be found there.
Longplay includes everything that we love so much in this group: great drive melodies, choruses, beautiful clean vocals and good growling, solos and great drum parts.
Now the former group drummer and one of its founders, Travis Smith, played simply amazing, each beat of his bass-barrels echoing in the chest, most of the parts are quite complex, but they are well remembered. Despite all the skill of the game by Matthew, Corey and Paolo, Travis is worthy of attention and praise. His parts are well played, thought out and mature.
Each song is interesting and good in its own way. Each of them has a huge number of advantages, any can be added to the rotation on the radio, and anyone would be a huge success. It is rather difficult to single out individual compositions, but in some of them certain parts simply strike with the skill, teamwork and musicians maturity.
Let’s start!
Thing that many listeners present as the main hit of the album is “Down from the Sky”, which, despite its magnificent melodiousness in the refrain, tells about a rather grim subject, namely, atomic bombing.
But I would single out “Like Callisto to a Star in Heaven”, because it was she who liked me the most. Strange, but few of my friends who are diligently listening to Trivium know about this song. Although, I think this is the most explosive composition in the tracklist, which reveals the talents of musicians and their desire for a symbiosis of genres.
“Into the Mouth of Hell We March” is another single with a great play in the middle of the song and as usual with a memorable chorus.
The brightest “hi” from the previous album is “Of Prometheus and the Crucifix”, which, however, contains one of the most soulful guitar solos in the entire history of the group.
The album closes with a twelve minute epic "Shogun". The band members call it the best song ever written by them. Suddenly, it was very pleasant to hear an acoustic play here, which was performed almost in a blues style.
The album is solid and organic. Despite the somewhat lengthy separate compositions, the material perception easily. During the first inspection, I was amazed at some points. And even after years, I believe that this is the best studio work in the entire history of Trivium.