MATT MEETS JAMI
Trivium vs Code Orange. Two of metal’s most passionate frontmen shoot the shit on the tour to end all tours.
It’s a pleasant 20˚C in Tampa this afternoon as Matt Heafy and Jami Morgan begin tentatively striking some poses for this month’s Hammer cover shoot. Jami, a Pittsburgh native, is in town with Code Orange, who later this evening will headline local hardcore festival FYA alongside a glut of the scene’s most exciting bands. Matt, meanwhile, is a resident of Orlando, some 90 miles up the road, and has interrupted ongoing rehearsals for Trivium’s imminent European tour to be here today. A tour which, it should be said, will not only feature Code Orange as main support, but additional heavy from Texan thrashers Power Trip and rising UK death metallers, Venom Prison. Put short: it’s a veritable smorgasbord of the most vital, most exciting bands that metal has to offer in 2018.
Over the past year, Code Orange have released one of the most acclaimed albums of recent times in major label debut Forever, played weekend-stealing sets everywhere from Download to Chicago Open Air, been championed by everyone from Corey Taylor and Randy Blythe to the WWE, and even picked up a Grammy nomination along the way. Trivium, too, have had their best 12 months in recent memory, unleashing an absolute destroyer of a record in The Sin And The Sentence, played their most successful US shows ever on a rapturously received tour with Arch Enemy, and been the chief instigators in
bringing together that aforementioned European jaunt. With both bands in such rare form, what better excuse to bring together two of our world’s most passionate spokesmen to cast their eye over where metal is at in
2018, and what needs to be done to keep its momentum on the rise? This is a veritable state of the nation, through the eyes of two men who are doing as much to help to define heavy music as anyone else in the game right now. And here’s what they had to say...
WHAT DOES THE WORD ‘METAL’ MEAN IN 2018?
Matt: “It’s means life. It means so much more than just a genre, and that’s something I’ve always championed; metal is not just a style of music, it’s a lifestyle. I think that’s really prevalent in the fact that, last year, when it came time for me to make a list of my top records of the year, just for fun, it was endless. There were so many great albums, it was ridiculous. So it’s a sign that it’s alive and well, and I think as long as the community and bands keep supporting each other, we’re gonna have something really good for the future.”
Jami: “Yeah, I mean, ‘metal’ is kinda a new term for us to be called and grouped in with, but hardcore comes from punk and metal, so I feel that it’s all very connected. Metal’s a big world, and I think that’s really cool. I do worry about it a little bit, because every big thing that happens in metal is very much dominated by something whose real, true peak was a while ago, and you don’t really see that in any other big music. But, I think that metal fans are super-resilient, so as long as there’s new people that get into it in that same way, then I think that it’ll always be one of the most important kinds of music. If metal can keep up with how the world’s changing, I think it will survive, and it will be as important as it has ever been.”
YOU MENTIONED THAT METAL’S QUITE A NEW THING FOR CODE ORANGE TO BE ASSOCIATED WITH. DO YOU THINK THAT SAYS SOMETHING ABOUT WHERE THE SCENE’S AT, THAT YOU’RE BEING EMBRACED BY A COMMUNITY THAT YOU DIDN’T FEEL AS MUCH KINSHIP WITH BEFORE?
J: “We make music that’s very influenced by metal, so I would expect it to be accepted by some level of the community. I think a lot of it comes from the same place.”
M: “What’s so important with us, that we don’t see enough as a bigger band, is people embracing [younger] bands that they like.
It’s way too often that I see a bigger band say something like, ‘I don’t know what’s happening in the music world today because I only like the old stuff’, or criticising what’s happening now. ‘I don’t listen to any new bands, there’s nothing I like.’ I see this all the time, and it drives me crazy. It stifles all the scenes – rock, metal, hardcore, underground music. It hurts it when people say there’s nothing as good as the ‘glory days’ of ’86, because there’s so much good stuff happening. When we were making The Sin And The Sentence, there were records we were listening to that made me feel like I was 16 years old again. When I got my hands on the latest Architects record, or the latest Fit For An Autopsy record, the latest Stick To Your Guns EP, I felt like I did when I first discovered Hatebreed, In Flames and Killswitch Engage.”
MATT, THIS TOUR IS PACKING ONE OF THE MOST EXCITING AND ECLECTIC LINEUPS WE’VE SEEN RECENTLY. WHERE DID THE SEEDS FOR ALL THIS COME FROM?
M: “An important thing in heavy music is to blur the lines. Don’t have those lines there.
When people say, ‘This is a death metal show’, or ‘This is a black metal show, or ‘This is a metal band, they can’t play with a hardcore band’… when you mix it all together, that’s what makes it exciting. So for us, when we wanted to make this tour, we looked at who our favourite bands in the world are right now, the bands that we felt are doing something amazing, that are blurring those lines. It’s so important to cultivate that, and I think it’s gonna be amazing, because all four bands are going to bring their own fans out. It’s gonna cross-pollinate everything, and that’s what has to happen to further heavy music.”
DO YOU FEEL A CERTAIN SENSE OF SOLIDARITY WITH THE LIKES OF CODE ORANGE, EVEN IF YOUR BANDS DON’T MAKE IMMEDIATELY OBVIOUS BEDFELLOWS?
M: “Yep. Our entire career was always people saying, ‘You guys are a baby band, what do you know about anything?’ It got really difficult for us, but we had to stick to our own thing, and that’s why I think it’s really important for bands who have stuck their neck out and put in the work to stick together. It’s gonna be a constant growth cycle, and it’s been amazing to see what’s happening with Code Orange, what’s happening with Power Trip, what’s happening with Venom Prison. It’s great to be out with young bands that are doing this.”
JAMI, DOES IT FEEL TO YOU LIKE THE WALLS BETWEEN THE SUBGENRES ARE STARTING TO COME DOWN A LITTLE, AT LEAST CULTURALLY SPEAKING?
J: “I think there’s definitely a lot more varied line-ups, varied bands teaming up for stuff. The way Code Orange decide on what we do is based on a couple of things: 1) is it gonna get us out there in front of an audience that we wanna be in front of, and 2) are the people who are involved people that we are cool with being associated with? So that was kinda how I determined doing this tour; talking to Matt, he’s a great dude and was really into doing this, and getting excited to get us in front of their audience. It’s a good thing for a band like us, because we know exactly what we wanna do, so it’s a good environment for us to thrive in.”
M: “Absolutely, and what’s so important for you guys – I’m not giving you advice, because you’re already doing it – is sticking to your guns and doing what you love. That’s what’s important. When we first came out on record two, Ascendancy, we had such a hard time getting tours. I know a lot of people in the UK don’t remember that, because it was a bit different there because we could headline, but no bands [in the US] wanted to bring us out. When we were getting UK magazine covers and we were saying really bold things
– I said we were gonna be the next Metallica – things went great for us for a minute, and the UK said we were gonna be the biggest band in the world. Then, the same magazines, the same country, all said, ‘This is the worst fucking band in the world.’ And that was on record three!”
J: “But who cares? Who gives a fuck if they think you’re the worst band in the world?”
M: “Exactly. And the nice thing is that we’re still standing. Outside of the UK, we’ve never
“WHEN WE STOP BEING GOOD, WE’LL F*CKING QUIT”
CODE ORANGE HAVE NO INTEREST IN RUNNING ON AUTOPILOT
been ‘the press band’ or ‘the band’s band’; we’ve just been held up by our fans, and that’s great.”
Trivium know all too well how fickle things can get when you’re anointed as The Next Big Thing. As Matt pointed out, if you asked anyone who the most exciting band in metal was back in 2005, chances are his band would be the first name on their lips. Barely a year later, with the release of The Crusade and its more polished songs and bigger choruses, Trivium found themselves as the whipping boys of the entire scene; emblematic of what can happen when you go for broke and try to make a grab for the mainstream. In 2018, they find themselves in the strongest position of their career, but they’ve have to learn some hard lessons along the way. Code Orange, meanwhile, are the hottest young property in metal today: unquestionably the breakout band of 2017, and at a point in their career where what comes next could be a pivotal moment not just for them, but for the scene around them…
JAMI, YOU GUYS ARE EXPERIENCING WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE LABELLED THE NEXT BIG THINGS. CAN YOU SUM UP HOW THE LAST 12 MONTHS HAVE BEEN FOR YOU?
J: “It’s been cool, but at the end of the day, the reason we want to get on mag covers and do the Grammys is because we want a platform to put our stuff out there and hope that people who have never heard of us are gonna hear us. You just gotta do what the fuck you’re doing, keep your head straight and make what you wanna make. If it works, great, if it doesn’t, fuck them, who cares? So yes, our last year has gone amazingly, but at the end of the day, if we made that same record and it didn’t hit that way, fuck ’em, it was the record I wanted to make. We’re gonna keep making good shit, and once it stops being good, then we’ll fucking quit.”
YOU MENTIONED THE GRAMMYS NOMINATION. IS IT IMPORTANT FOR MAINSTREAM ORGANISATIONS TO SHINE A SPOTLIGHT ON HEAVY MUSIC? DO YOU THINK WE nEED THAT KIND OF VALIDATION?
J: “The reason I think it would have been good if we’d won is not because we could say, ‘Oh, we won a Grammy! All these old dudes voted for us to win!’ It’s the platform you get from it. The speech you can have, how that’s gonna get five million views on YouTube, how people are gonna start speaking your name to people who have never heard this shit. That’s why we wanted to win. It’s not about if we ‘need’ it or not, but it can be used as a really important tool. I feel like the problem with The Grammys is that it’s set up so a band like Mastodon get it too late, when they should have got it years ago.”
M: “I say Amen to a lot of that. I agree that it’s great when you see bands like Code Orange and Mastodon getting uttered in the same sentence as Bruno Mars and Justin Bieber, and I think Mastodon’s win has been heavily discounted when it shouldn’t have been. But, it’s been different for us. Apart from Ascendancy – and that was just in the UK – we have never been up for awards for anything. I’m not saying that in a salty, woe-is-us way, but we are usually the band that are discounted for covers, awards, nominations. But, contrarily, when things are fan-based votes? That’s when the wins usually happen for us. So we’ve always had to fight it alone, and I think it’s cool when the mainstream is in there, but it’s a different world. The win is that there are still metal bands on those lists, and I wish it could be taken further.”
IT ALSO FEELS LIKE THE BANDS WHO ARE GETTING RECOGNISED NOW ARE THE ONES GOING OUT THERE, DOING WHAT THE FUCK THEY WANT AND NOT SOUNDING LIKE ANYTHING ELSE AROUND…
M: “I think there is more of that, but I think there’s more of the other side as well. like, a massive [recent] win for metal, metalcore, heavy music, is Architects’ show that they just did at Alexandra Palace. Architects drawing 10,000 people in london? That is a win for heavy music, and I feel like they deserve it so damn much because they put out one of the best metal records I’ve heard in a decade. So, there are good things happening, but at the same time, there are polar opposite things happening as well.
When people glorify the idea of a golden age, a heyday, it’s never quite the same as people had it in their head. Our song The
Revanchist is about that, about selling that idea of a golden age to people.”
You would’ve had to have had your head in the sand to not recognise that metal is entering another Golden Age as we speak. As well as all four bands on that imminent tour being on fire, it feels like every part of the scene is pulling its weight: from underground players like Tribulation and Myrkur breaking through, to young guns like Employed To Serve and Conjurer setting a new standard in heavy, all the way up to veterans like Judas Priest and Saxon putting out killer new material; the genre is in fine fettle. For Trivium and Code Orange, it offers a chance for both bands to stake their claim at the top of a scene that is giving metalheads of all persuasions more reasons to be excited than ever.
“WE’VE HAD TO FIGHT IT ALONE. IT’S A DIFFERENT WORLD”
TRIVIUM HAVE GOT USED TO NO LONGER BEING MEDIA DARLINGS
IT FEELS LIKE METAL CULTURE IN 2018 IS LESS DEFINED BY A SOUND AND MORE BY AN ATTITUDE. IT’S JUST ABOUT HEAVY MUSIC
– THIS TOUR HAS DEATH METAL, THRASH, HARDCORE, HEAVY METAL...
M: “Absolutely. The important thing is furthering heavy music in every genre.
Metal. Death. Thrash. Metalcore. Hardcore… all these things are under the same blanket, and that’s why we’re all about championing things that just work together. When I see the four bands on this tour, I don’t think about the genres where they reside; I think about where they’re going. All four bands have that indefinable quality where they cross lines.
Once bands do that, and then make the best songs they can possibly make? That’s how you further everything.”
J: “It’s also important to note that all these bands come from the same world, and that’s the world that breeds people learning how to do this stuff themselves and making it happen on all levels. Actually, larissa from Venom Prison used to sing in a hardcore band, Power
Trip are a thrash band but they’re hardcore
kids…”
“HaVe We toureD oN a proper Bus? i’Ve NeVer
eVeN seeN oNe”
CODE ORANGE ARE STILL PAYING THEIR DUES
M: “And we started on a hardcore label!”
J: “Right. And that scene teaches you how to really do it: how to make your shirts, book your tours, write your songs…”
M: “Yeah, how to finish your set, run merch, drive the van, how to survive. It always blows my mind when I see a new band of any genre with a state-of-the-art bus, first tour. Dude, how long is this gonna work? How are you gonna be able to handle reality? On our first tour, we had to drive 12 hours across Belgium to play to 12 people.”
J: “Yeah, we still do that shit now. It sucks, and we’re about to do it again! I’ve never even been on a tourbus before. I’ve never seen one.”
M: “Well, you guys are on your way out of that shit, as long as you keep on doing what you’re doing.”
J: “Hell yeah. My back prays that we are…”
And with that somewhat prophetic sentiment, our time with Matt and Jami draws to a close. Jami will join his bandmates to smash the shit out of another stage just down the road in a couple of hours, while Matt will resume rehearsals for a tour that could prove to be a defining moment for both of these seemingly disparate, and yet firmly united bands. As the two men bid each other farewell and head for the door, Matt briefly pauses before turning back to Hammer with one parting thought about what is to come.
“Dude, I’m so excited about this tour,” he grins. “I’m so happy to see how hungry all four of these bands are, and how we’re all gonna bring it. When people hear the blanket term ‘metal’, maybe they just think of Manowar, but not me. Metal encompasses everything. It encompasses bands like Code Orange. It encompasses Trivium. It encompasses Architects, Behemoth, Emperor. All of these things can coexist and can live together.
And that’s fucking amazing.”
TRIVIUM’S THE SIn AnD THE
SEnTEnCE AND CODE ORANGE’S FOREVER ARE BOTH OUT NOW VIA ROADRUNNER. CATCH BOTH BANDS, PLUS POWER TRIP AND VENOM PRISON, ON A HAMMER
SPONSORED UK TOUR THIS APRIL – SEE PAGE 108 FOR DATES