As a country we do pretty well with music festivals. Our entire summer, no matter what your vibing on, there is some field or park that temporarily turns into a playground for music lovers with several stages of music to choose from at any given time, before turning into a dustbowl littered with plastic cups, happy memories and the notion of what happens at festivals, stays at festivals.
The only thing with music festivals is that given the demanding schedule the headline tours for hardcore fans to enjoy full sets, sometimes take longer to happen. Trivium have toured several times with Soundwave over recent years but haven’t headlined since 2008.
Prepare though, for salvation is not far away, having just announced an epic national tour ready to awaken the sleeping legion of metal fans down under ahead of a new album drop next year – yep, new album folks.
As if knowing that it’s been to long, the metal band from Florida have made up for the long time between drinks by announcing that none other that Swedish metal icons In Flames will be with them, sending metal heads into a frenzy, hot with anticipation for the carnage that will soon ensue stages across our major cities.
We caught up with Corey Beaulieu, guitarist and mastermind behind Trivium’s work (along of course with band mates Matt Heafy (vocals) and Paolo Gregoletto (bass) and chatted about the upcoming tour, all things metal and guitars.
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Metal fans across the country are stoked to hear you’re making it to Australia for a headline show, looking forward to coming back?
“Yeah, I’m pretty stoked. We’ve been trying to get a headline tour down there for a couple of years and for some reason, a headliner never kind of happened because you would always come down for Soundwave so we’re really excited. We were finally able to make the headlining thing happen and are really looking forward to it. I know fans have always been emailing us and tweeting us about when we were gonna do an Australian headline tour and now, no bullshit, I can finally say we’re coming.”
You’ve just finished up the Rock Star Mayhem festival tour, what are you keeping busy with now?
“We just finished that up on August 11th and we’re pretty much off work until we go down to Japan and Australia in November, got a couple months off with a few shows left so we’re pretty much at home working on the new record until next fall when we put it out and start touring again. It’s good to be home as we’ve been gone pretty much all year.”
It’s been dubbed as a ‘career encompassing tour’ what should Aussie fans prepare for?
“It’s our first headliner since like 2009 or something, we’ve put out two records since that time so there’s probably a lot of fans, new fans that we made on the last two records that have never seen a headlining show.
And then there’s also a lot of fans that haven’t seen us headline in a couple records and there’s quite a lot of songs that you know playing a shorter set on Soundwave, there’s deeper material in our catalogue that they haven’t been able to experience live so hopefully we’ll be able to put a setlist together that people won’t have seen live, and newer songs that they’ve never seen at all so…should be a pretty fun time [laughs]! Every time we play in Australia it’s awesome so to headline and do our own show will be even better.
Let’s talk tour bus music, what have you been listening too?
“Definitely on the touring I go through phases where I’ll be like ‘man, I haven’t heard this record in a long time I forgot how fucking awesome it is!’ [laughs] But on the tour bus you know between Paulo, Matt and I on the last couple of tours we were listening to a lot of Rainbow, Deep Purple, Iron Maiden, Priest you know all of the old classic heavy metal stuff. Also some of the newer stuff, I was really into the new Winery Dogs album and also I really like Black Country Communion.
But I’ve gotta say, the new Slash record is fucking awesome [laughs]. I got the record sent to me a few days ago and I was like ‘holy crap, this record has 17 songs – jesus’ and I just put it on and let it play while I was hanging ‘round the house. There’s not many bands that can write 17 songs on a record and not one of them is bad. Every song is awesome. That’s probably the coolest thing I’ve heard in a while at least as far as I can remember, the new Accept record is really cool too.
Being a songwriter (or creator of epic shreddage) what does your ear listen out for when on the hunt for new music?
“I guess really that I’m into that classic metal sound, I just like songs with big hooks and great singing and stuff like that, I don’t really listen to too much stuff that has a lot of screaming in it, so I like that classic heavy metal rock sound.”
We see, so the classic rock metal sound is what first lured you into making heavy music?
“You know, the first band that really got me into music, like obviously growing up I heard music but like my sister listened to Mariah Carey or some shit like that and I ain’t no pop singer but… Guns And Roses was the first time I was like ‘holy shit, what is this?’ so Guns and Roses and Metallica was like ‘whoa, what’s going on here’ and I wanted to play guitar. Obviously I’d find out about more music but definitely the stuff that got me into music was Guns And Roses. I got all the Guns & Roses records first because that was the only band I had heard of so that was all I listened to for a while. Then, a friend of mine let me borrow ‘Master of Puppets’ which absolutely blew my mind and then hearing like Slayer and Megadeath for the first time you know hearing ‘Rest In Peace’ is pretty much a mind fuck as far as guitar playing goes.
One of my favourite things about music and writing music and listening to music, to me, nothing is cooler than hearing harmonised guitar melodies like Iron Maiden, hearing that stuff is like so bad ass. I definitely like heavy stuff, but nothing to me, I’m just so into music that has goose bump melodies, vocals, guitars and stuff like that. Anything that has that, I’m wanting to check out.”
You control your guitar like a master, how did you get so good?
“First starting off in music and things that like, being into the early metal and also like the thrash metal stuff you know the guitar playing is pretty crazy and really good. So you know that early thrash metal like The Stain, Slayer and all that stuff I would just jam along to the CD and it would help me get better. As I got older and I heard more stuff there’s newer influences, new guitar players that you check out and just try to keep expanding on stuff rather than sticking the same influences. Learning influences from new people is great. That’s probably the influence for a lot of guitar players is all the Metallica, Megadeath and Pantera stuff.”
And we’re gonna do it, do you have a favourite guitar? Be honest!
“[Laughs] I have a lot of guitars. But all of my Jacksons, all my signature guitars you know I got a bunch of signature guitars that I could just pick up any of them and they all play awesome so it’s kind of hard to single one out. The only way you could really, I mean there all made the same they all feel the same, so the only way you could pick your favourite would be by the way it looks, cos I’ve got a bunch of different colours.”
I’m a guitar hoarder. I barely play any of them cos a lot are in storage but, I can guarantee when you get one guitar, it’s still awesome getting a new one when you’ve got like 60 of them.”
Why Jackson, what do you look for in your guitar maker?
“Jackson is really good at having a really consistently made guitar cos everyone I get, there’s no one superior than the other, they’re all great. It’s a really good trait to have in your guitar builder is consistently high quality with no flaws in your construction.”
The metal gods have aligned their planets and delivered on one of the biggest heavy music tours of the year with Trivium and In Flames massive Australian headline tour kicking off in November. Check the dates below!
Trivium + In Flames National Tour
WEDNESDAY 19 NOVEMBER BRISBANE, THE TIVOLI – 18+
FRIDAY 21 NOVEMBER SYDNEY, UNSW ROUNDHOUSE– Licensed All Ages
SUNDAY 23 NOVEMBER MELBOURNE, 170 RUSSELL – 18+ *SOLD OUT*
MONDAY 24 NOVEMBER MELBOURNE, 170 RUSSELL – 18+ *NEW SHOW*
TUESDAY 25 NOVEMBER ADELAIDE, HQ – 18+
For tickets and info, visit www.soundwavetouring.com
