God Forbid

Idle hands beget the devil’s work. This is certainly true in the case of *Trivium *tonight. After touring their silver-selling _Ascendancy _album for over a year and a half now and a certain level of boredom is definitely showing.

When this fearless quartet played this very venue just six months ago, there was a tension and a desire to just get out there onstage and play every marvellous song they had in their repertoire to people who really wanted to hear just that. Now, having done that god knows how many times since then, the two guitarists of *Matt Heafy *and *Corey Beaulieu *have a mid-set guitar-wanking battle that the trunk-necked Beaulieu clearly wins and the band descends into a mini-medley of covers, just to keep it fresh. Granted, Matt Heavy looks as comfortable tonight as he ever has done but there’s just a sense that his moves are tired and he is primarily just going through the motions.

This fickle business does not allow for any stagnation and the band that took the young Floridians out on tour for the very first time are the main support here tonight. *God Forbid * never threaten to blow the headliners out of the water tonight but with their ferocious blend of metalcore, they stalk the stage with heavier beats and more bludgeoning stage presence than their more youthful contemporaries. There are no gimmicks here in a set that is centred solely on the music. Leaving the stage after playing their heavily rotated new single to rapturous applause, it was going to take something special to follow it.

The cheese factor in heavy metal is always there but when it’s so horribly hammed up, like it is here by Trivium, then an element of suspicion runs through the mind of even the most obsessive fan. Sadly, instead of bringing a little entertainment, the stage show only served to be a slight annoyance, as it just seemed like they thought they had to waste some time somehow.

It seemed they didn’t quite understand that if they are to realise their dreams of immortality then they just have to play their hearts out every night. They were searching for approval from the crowd when that really wasn’t necessary. Despite these criticisms, there can be no taking away from the fact that they can cite any single one of the tracks from _Ascendancy _and be confident in calling it a future classic track. They prove this by playing the majority of them harder and faster than they have done before. It is a spectacle.

While their talent is unquestionable and abundant, it appears that *Trivium *are in desperate need of new material to play. The new album really cannot come soon enough for either them or their fans. There are to be some testing times ahead for the band if they are to reach the high targets they’ve set themselves.