TRIVIUM Declined To Postpone 'What The Dead Men Say' Album Release

In a new interview with MoreCore TV, TRIVIUM frontman Matt Heafy was asked if the coronavirus crisis affected the release date of the band's ninth full-length album, "What The Dead Men Say". He responded (see video below): "We had the option to postpone, and we said, 'Absolutely no way.' We see bands pulling out [of releasing new music] because of quote[-unquote] 'record sales.' Who cares about that right now? Right now we owe it to our fans to give them something new. We've got people that don't have jobs right now. We've got people that don't have health insurance right now. We've got people that aren't able to leave their home, people that are sick, people that are stuck in. We want to give them something that they can look forward to that makes them forget about this for just an hour."

"What The Dead Men Say" was released on April 24 through Roadrunner Records. The LP, which was produced by TRIVIUM and Josh Wilbur, is the follow-up to 2017's "The Sin And The Sentence". That effort marked the band's first release with drummer Alex Bent, who joined TRIVIUM in 2016.

Heafy told Australia's "Distortion" radio show about the musical direction of "What The Dead Men Say": "I feel like with this one, it's the perfect synopsis, in some way, of everything we've done in the band. From records one through eight, every single record was very different from each other — every single one. But eight, 'The Sin And The Sentence', was sort of a recap of everything we've done, and I feel like nine is a recap of everything we've done from one through eight, including everything we've ever done. So I feel like this is a really good record to show someone what TRIVIUM is from the start. You can't really do that with every record — you can't show someone just [2006's] 'The Crusade' and have it make sense to what TRIVIUM was off [2005's] 'Ascendancy' or [2011's] 'In Waves'. You can't show someone just [2008's] 'Shogun' and make it make sense to what 'Ascendancy' was. And I feel like this one is the one where you can hear all the roots are present in what this music is."

TRIVIUM is scheduled to support MEGADETH and LAMB OF GOD on a 55-date North American tour this summer and fall.