Trivium frontman Matt Heafy has opened up on the day he momentarily quit the band last year. Speaking exclusively to Metal Hammer, Matt explains that a combination of issues within the band itself led him to a breaking point that saw him seriously consider turning his back on Trivium after more than 25 years.
“[Our] chemistry starts falling apart a little bit,” he explains. “Not from one person, not from me, but it’s just the sum of its parts. Things aren’t going right. Quiet explosion. I’m tracking guitars. I stand up. I leave. I call [my wife] Ashley. I’m like, ‘I’m done with this fucking band. I can’t do this shit anymore. It’s 26, 27 years of this shit that just keeps happening.'”
At that point, midway through 2025, Trivium had just wrapped up a celebratory North American tour honouring 20 years of breakthrough album Ascendancy, but those problems were threatening to send things rattling off course.
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“[I was] at the Hangar [a converted hanger Trivium now use as a rehearsal and writing space]. I just start driving home, get home, turn my phone off. Like, ‘I’m not going [back] in.’ And then Ashley lets the dust settle, and she’s like, ‘You’re not quitting the band. You can’t quit the band. You’re part of this band. You’ve got to figure this out. Go back to the studio.'”
After some consideration, Matt quickly reversed his decision to quit, but the issues within Trivium persisted, eventually leading to drummer Alex Bent leaving the band that October. While Matt won’t be drawn to air any – as he puts it – “dirty laundry”, he remains adamant that Bent’s departure was the best thing for the band in the long term.
“Sometimes, when there’s a change, when your favourite married couple gets divorced, you break up with your girlfriend, you get fired from your job, you fire someone from your company, sometimes things have to happen for the survival of the ‘whole’, or the ‘whole’ will not survive any more,” he says. “[Trivium] would have been gone. It would have been done. We made the correction, and now we are tighter live than we’ve ever been.”
Trivium recently announced that their brand new studio album Crown In The Grave will be landing on November 20. The band team up with Swedish melodeath legends In Flames for a tour that will hit North America this winter with support from Orbit Culture, Fit For An Autopsy and Frozen Soul, before the two bands head across Europe in spring 2027 with Paleface Swiss and Vola.
Read more from Hammer's interview with Matt Heafy in next month's issue of Metal Hammer.