After releasing two albums back-to-back in 2020 and 2021, Trivium has returned with their first new music in four years in the form of Struck Dead, a three-song EP.
As guitarist Corey Beaulieu tells ABC Audio, Trivium wrote the material for Struck Dead while rehearsing for their 2025 tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of their 2005 album, Ascendency.
“The plan was to have a song,” Beaulieu says. “It was, like, one song turned into two, and then two turned into three, and we were just like, ‘F*** it, let’s just record all of ’em.'”
Shifting between going through Ascendency and coming up with new stuff ended up influencing the feel of the material, even if subconsciously.
“The songs that came out of it were obviously, I don’t think, sound like they were Ascendency songs,” Beaulieu says. “But I think they’re kinda like spirit animal songs in a way, where we were trying to, like, just capture that intensity and energy that that record had.”
Struck Dead is out now, and Trivium also launches a U.S. tour Friday. It will mark their first live outing with new drummer Alex Rüdinger. The EP, Beaulieu feels, “clears the slate” for the next Trivium album.
“The EP can be its own little [thing],” he says. “Then we can kinda start fresh focusing on a record with having more of a, I guess, concept, plan of what we want the record to be.”
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