Music
Plus One
The 11 best Trivium songs
With a UK tour set for spring 2027, we rank the Floridian metal outfit's greatest tracks
Trivium were hated when they first broke through. Still in their teens and sporting questionable haircuts, the goodwill they found with 2005’s Ascendancy drew the ire of elitists – and plenty of the bands around them, too. Fortunately, the Florida metal greats are all grown up now, and over the course of 10 albums they’ve become one of their genre’s favourite sons, each release landing slightly differently within their playing field of heaviness, melody and instrumental skill.
Ahead of the release of new album Crown in the Grave and a European co-headliner with In Flames, these are Trivium’s 11 best track, ranked.
11. ‘Bury Me with My Screams’
(Struck Dead, 2025)
Three-song EP Struck Dead was a halfway house being the technical extremity of 2021’s In the Court of the Dragon and the arena-metal Trivium seem to be veering towards. Opener and single ‘Bury Me with My Screams’ was an intense exploration of singer/guitarist Matt Heafy’s 2024 mental breakdown. ‘I must pull myself out of this!’ he definitely howls after a blistering yet bleak chorus.
10. ‘Until the World Goes Cold’
(Silence in the Snow, 2015)
Written and recorded after Heafy blew his voice out in 2014, Silence in the Snow was a controversially scream-free effort where the band turned to Dio and Def Leppard for inspiration. The gatekeepers’ whinging was swiftly overpowered by the success of this single, now one of Trivium’s biggest hits. No setlist would feel complete without its contrast of chugging open-Es and despondent harmonies.
9. ‘Strife’
(Vengeance Falls, 2013)
Vengeance Falls is broadly seen as another clanger in Trivium’s catalogue, but beneath the uneven production job from Disturbed squawker David Draiman, there lies some winning tracks. Nothing demonstrates this better than the single ‘Strife’, which starts with a gurn-inducing riff then only gets better from there. The rumbling bassline is among Paolo Gregoletto’s best, and the final chorus could motivate a tortoise into a sprint.
8. ‘Becoming the Dragon’
(The Crusade, 2006)
Not wanting to be perceived as one-trick ponies, the band followed their breakthrough effort Ascendancy with an album that ditched the breakdowns and screams. In their place were more vintage thrash flourishes and plenty of proggy experiments, especially on the eight-minute instrumental title track. ‘Becoming the Dragon’ balanced both of those new elements, launching into a speed metal blitz then ending with a fandangled bass solo from Gregoletto.
7. ‘The Sin and the Sentence’
(The Sin and the Sentence, 2017)
The ballad ‘The Heart from Your Hate’ is the biggest track from Trivium’s eighth album, but it’s not nearly the best. That distinction goes to the opening title track, which came out as the lead single and declared that the foursome were once again at their heaviest. Heafy’s roars made a welcome return and new drummer Alex Bent flaunted his skills, thrashing his way through the whole thing.
6. ‘In Waves’
(In Waves, 2011)
After the widened scope of Shogun, In Waves brought the band back to a tighter school of songwriting. The title track was taut but felt epic, its intro hitting like a sledgehammer to the head before the rest of the runtime weaved between hyper-catchy vocal melodies. It’s become Trivium’s go-to show-ender and it’s easy to understand why: everybody goes apeshit to Heafy’s opening roars.
5. ‘Shattering the Skies Above’
(God of War: Blood and Metal, 2010)
Not a massive song, but a bona fide barnstormer. Trivium wrote this track for a tie-in EP to blood-soaked gaming franchise God of War, and no one could have asked for a mightier soundtrack to murdering Greek deities. ‘I will destroy all that you love!’ Heafy snarled, matching the aggression and ambition of Kratos himself. It never made an album proper, rather getting plonked onto the deluxe edition of In Waves. Seek it out.
4. ‘In the Court of the Dragon’
(In the Court of the Dragon, 2021)
2017 to 2021 was Trivium’s tech-metal era, and it reached its apex with this knuckle-shredding shot of badassery. Pretty much everything about it inspired awe, from the rampaging drums underneath the melodic chorus, to Heafy’s mosh call of ‘the stars have died and the heavens go up in flames!’, followed by a beat drop steeper than falling off a skyscraper. F*cking primo shit, boys.
3. ‘A Gunshot to the Head of Trepidation’
(Ascendancy, 2005)
A venomous statement against domestic abusers, this Ascendancy standout was a song of two halves. The hulking opening section combined the best of Swedish metal with the blunt-force grooves of the 90s US scene. Then, the band burst into a fit of melodicism, employing a call-and-answer hook and Iron Maiden-esque harmonies. It was all of Trivium’s biggest influences, condensed into something beyond the sum of their parts.
2. ‘Pull Harder on the Strings of Your Martyr’
(Ascendancy, 2005)
Another Ascendancy winner (is there any wonder why this album made them so big, so fast?), ‘Pull Harder…’ followed a more conventional structure than ‘Gunshot…’ but proved no less heavy-hitting. Its tribal drum pattern had the power to incite a moshpit in an old people’s home, before the scream-sing chorus bridged catharsis and melodic relief. The soloing still stings like a hornet, too.
1. ‘Throes of Perdition’
(Shogun, 2008)
What makes Trivium special? Is it the melodic nous, the brutal bits, the melodic flair or the technical acumen? Like with any artist whose rises above and beyond, it’s all their defining elements at once, and nowhere were they in neater balance than on this Shogun single. It was an odyssey in six minutes, boasting a lacerating intro, one of their beefiest breakdowns and a chorus doused in cocaine. Move a single note and the entire thing would have fallen apart – that’s how fine the mixture was.
