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ALBUM REVIEW: "The Sin And The Sentence" by Trivium

   Trivium have been consistently hit and miss for me over he years; for every album I dig there is at least one album I can't get into. In fact, more often than not their material as a whole fails to leave an impact on me. I can appreciate Ascendancy and Shogun for what they were at the time and the ripples they sent through the metal scene, and while incredibly bloated and overlong In Waves has some killer tracks nestled in there. Apart from that, there isn't much to be had in terms of enjoyment for me in the band's music. It was a surprise for me, then, when I found myself enjoying The Sin And The Sentence a lot more than I had anticipated. Whether or not this was because of the incredibly biased expectations I had coming in is anyone's guess, but for the most part I had fun with this new album from Trivium. It's not rewriting the metal history books, and it's not going to blow everyone away, but it was a reminder of just why they were such a massive hype band back in the day - they've still got it. For me I think it comes down to two things - improved vocals and an apparent sharper focus on single songs rather than the album as a whole. Matt Heafy's singing has improved dramatically since Silence In The Snow, and the return to prominence of guitarist Corey Beaulieu's screaming was a very welcome addition. In terms of the song writing, normally an awareness of the manner in which the songs come together as a whole is very important to me in the construction of an album, but in recent releases there seems to have been an oversight of specific songwriting for the sake of the construction of a thematic concept album. I'm not saying that on The Sin And The Sentence the band throw this out all together - there is still a sense of continuity and cohesion - but more of these songs as individual compositions stand out as being strong in comparison to a lot of their previous work. Length is still an issue for the band, though, and if you're not 100% in on what they are doing then the 57 minutes of this record will be tiring to say the least; as with a lot of their earlier work it could have done with some trimming, but thankfully it doesn't devolve into the dreary depths of Ember To Inferno, the Special Edition of In Waves or Shogun, all of which become too overlong for their own good. I probably won't be coming back to it, but The Sin And The Sentence was surprisingly okay for a band I have learnt to avoid.

   Rating: C+

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