Orlando, Florida's Trivium are among the most provocative, restless, and influential bands to emerge from the American South's heavy metal explosion in the early 21st century. Beginning as a metalcore outfit, they have relentlessly combined and crossed styles including thrash, prog, technical, and melodic death metal, as well as alternative and groove metal. Trivium came by their global success the old-fashioned way: touring. Since issuing their first demo in 2000, they have been road warriors. They established themselves first in the South, and then across North America before conquering festival stages in Europe and Asia supporting their sophomore long-player Ascendancy in 2005. 2008's Shogun showcased epic storytelling abilities as well as a love for innovative riffs. Its compositional tenets and love for narrative storytelling influenced each subsequent release, beginning with 2011's In Waves. 2017's The Sin and the Sentence used them inside an extreme metal setting and became one of their most acclaimed albums, selling better in Europe than it did in the States. 2020's What the Dead Men Say fully integrated all their musical tenets. 2021's In the Court of the Dragon was written and recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic. Hailing from central Florida, Trivium formed in 1999 and quickly built a buzz around Orlando's metal community with their blend of metalcore, thrash, and progressive metal. Having secured a contract with the German Lifeforce imprint, the band issued its debut album, Ember to Inferno, in October 2003 with a lineup that included vocalist/guitarist Matt Heafy, drummer Travis Smith, and bassist Brent Young. The debut was well-received and Trivium signed with Roadrunner Records for their next effort. Ascendancy appeared in March 2005, at which point the band's roster had shifted to include Heafy, Smith, bassist Paolo Gregoletto, and guitarist Corey Beaulieu. The album was reissued in May of the following year with four additional tracks and a bonus DVD. Trivium then visited the U.K. in June for the 2006 Download Festival, followed by multiple European headlining gigs and a stint with America's traveling metal/hardcore fest Sounds of the Underground. The tour saw them playing alongside other heavy-hitting bands like As I Lay Dying, GWAR, Cannibal Corpse, and Terror. Crusade appeared that fall, featuring a newfound emphasis on singing (previously, vocalist Heafy had relied on screams and throaty growls). Despite the band's active defense of Heafy's vocal approach, Trivium received much criticism for their shift in sound; accordingly, they wasted no time in returning to a scream-filled thrash style with 2008's Shogun. In 2010, Trivium announced drummer Nick Augusto would be replacing the departing Smith. Later that year, the band went into the studio to begin work on their fifth studio album, In Waves, which was released in the summer of 2011 and saw the group bring a bold new approach and maturity to its songwriting. However, feeling that the album's gestation process had been overlong and that they had produced too much material, they decided to focus on quality rather than quantity in the on-the-road writing sessions for their next record. The band tapped Disturbed's David Draiman to produce, and the metal veteran took a real hands-on approach, bringing a newfound sense of melody to Trivium's sound. The finished album, Vengeance Falls, was released in October of 2013; it received enthusiastic reviews from critics and charted well in the United States, the U.K., Japan, and Europe. Trivium underwent yet another personnel change when they parted company with drummer Augusto in May of 2014. He was replaced by drum tech Matt Madiro. Late in the year, Trivium entered the studio with producer Michael "Elvis" Baskette and mixing engineer Josh Wilbur to begin work on the band's seventh album. The title track, "Silence in the Snow," was issued as a video single in July of 2015, and the album followed on Roadrunner in early October. Silence in the Snow was their first full-length to land on the Active Rock Top Ten and secured them headliner status for the European festivals Summerbreeze and Bloodstock. After the release of the album, Madiro left the band and was succeeded by Paul Wandtke, who lasted less than a year before being replaced by Alex Bent. In late 2016, Trivium partnered with Cooking Vinyl to re-release Ember to Inferno in several variations. The two deluxe editions contained the band's earliest demos, including "Ruber" (aka the Red Demo), "Caeruleus" (aka the Blue Demo), and "Flavus" (aka the Yellow Demo), all recorded when Heafy was between 16 and 17 years old. Late 2017 saw the release of the band's eighth studio long-player, The Sin and the Sentence, which was produced by Josh Wilbur and released on Roadrunner. The set peaked at number 23 on the Top 200, and landed in the top spot on the Hard Rock Albums chart. After extensive touring and a well-deserved break, the band re-entered the studio with Wilbur in late 2019. In February of the following year, Trivium's members began adding cryptic messages to their social media accounts to attract interest for their upcoming album. They further teased its release with two songs -- "IX" and "Scattering the Ashes" -- added to the "Spawn" trailer for the Mortal Kombat video game in March. Trivium delivered their ninth full-length, What the Dead Men Say, in April. Original bassist Brent Young died on September 25, 2020; he was 37 years old. Sidelined by the global quarantine imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Trivium wrote and recorded the Wilbur-produced In the Court of the Dragon while in isolation; it was released in October 2021. ~ Johnny Loftus, Rovi

Between the Buried and Me are a thinking man's metal outfit from Raleigh, North Carolina. Their ability to move seamlessly from death, prog, technical, death, and math metal to the blues is unique. On 2003's The Silent Circus they ground through the warehouse of extreme music's subgenres. They referred to 2007's Colors as "a 65-minute opus of non-stop pummeling beautiful music...." and critics agreed. 2015's relatively accessible Coma Ecliptic revealed that BTBAM had widened their creative circle to the degree that critics lauded them as a "progressive metal" band. They underscored this impression with 2018's conceptual two-part Automata, which offered stylistic shifts amid panoramic production aesthetics. In 2021, the band issued Colors II, a sequel to its 2007 cult classic. The band formed in 2000 after the dissolution of vocalist Tommy Rogers and guitarist Paul Waggoner's previous group, Prayer for Cleansing. Rogers and Waggoner completed their new lineup with the addition of guitarist Nick Fletcher, bassist Jason King (ex-Azazel), and drummer Mark Castillo, formerly of Bury Your Dead. An eponymous debut soon appeared, issued through the German indie Lifeforce, and the band supported its release with an avid tour schedule. Between the Buried and Me signed with Chicago hardcore powerhouse Victory in the summer of 2002 and began work on their debut for the label. The Silent Circus appeared in late October of the following year and showcased a more focused fusion of the group's math rock, heavy metal, and post-hardcore influences. Several lineup changes ensued that saw Rogers and Waggoner rounded out by guitarist Dusty Waring, bassist Dan Briggs, and drummer Blake Richardson. Joining forces with producer Jamie King, who had recorded their self-titled effort, Between the Buried and Me released Alaska in September 2005. Various tour dates with the Dillinger Escape Plan, Every Time I Die, Bleeding Through, and Haste the Day followed. The band next paid tribute to many of its influences -- from Pantera to Queen to Pink Floyd -- on the covers album The Anatomy Of, which surfaced in June 2006, before hitting the road on a subsequent headlining tour. That fall, Victory reissued The Silent Circus with an additional bonus DVD of material. In 2007, they went into the studio with producer Jamie King and recorded Colors, which was released that September through Victory Records and described as "new wave polka grunge" by the band. The Great Misdirect, the band's fifth studio album, appeared two years later. Victory put out a Between the Buried and Me greatest-hits album in 2011, just weeks before the band released its first EP on Metal Blade, The Parallax: Hypersleep Dialogues, the first entry in a two-part concept album. The second part, The Parallax II: Future Sequence, followed in 2012. In 2013, they embarked on the Future Sequence Tour, where they played The Parallax II in full. The group reentered the studio in late 2014 to begin work on a new concept recording -- Metal Blade referred to it as a "rock opera." Coma Ecliptic was produced by Jamie King and mixed by Jens Bogren. The set's pre-release single, "Memory Palace," appeared in April of 2015; the album followed in July. In 2017, Between the Buried and Me released the concert LP Coma Ecliptic Live, which featured the band playing the album live in its entirety at the Observatory North Park in San Diego, California. It was their final album for Metal Blade. The band signed to Sumerian that year and quickly hit the studio with King returning as producer. They developed a double-length concept album, Automata, to be issued as two separate recordings with different release dates. According to Rogers: "We can get music instantly, and with this luxury, the listener has a hard time sitting down with albums and exploring their every twist and turn. Because of this, we have decided to release our new album in two parts." The album's songs explore several central questions: What if dreams could be broadcast for the purpose of entertainment? Could you consume the innermost thoughts of another person onscreen? If you could, what does that say about an attention-starved audience? More importantly, what would become of the dreamer? The truly accessible Automata I was issued in early March of 2018; in July, its existence was nearly contradicted (musically) by its companion release, Automata II, an epic, emotional, and eccentric journey that found the group working not only through the usual panoply of genres but also jazz, swing, improvised music, and avant-rock. In 2021, BTBAM issued Colors II. After the COVID-19 pandemic dictated being off the road and out of the studio for more than a year, the band decided they had something to prove, that their next album was a do or die effort -- the same attitude that guided 2007's Colors. In June they issued the single "Fix the Error," that featured appearances from three guest drummers: Mike Portnoy, Navene Koperweis, and Ken Schalk. In July they followed with the epic nine-minute single "Revolution in Limbo." Colors II was issued by Sumerian Records in late August. ~ Johnny Loftus, Rovi

Hymns in Dissonance, indeed: “No holds barred; there is nothing nice about HID, from the riffs to the lyrics to the overall vibe of the album,” states guitarist Alex Wade. “We attempted to write our heaviest album to date. We wanted to put out something that was shockingly menacing and brutal.” “The album follows the story of a cultist who is gathering worthy people to join his cult,” Wade furthers, “and there are moments in the storyline where the cult followers are singing an evil hymn to open a portal for the head cultist to enter.” The band’s dynamic, brutal musicality serves as a soundtrack to the compelling lyrical story that vocalist Phil Bozeman vividly imagines.  “Hymns in Dissonance is a mockery of the true nature of what hymns are,” Bozeman explains. “Hymns are melodious and harmonious. Dissonance is the opposite of melody and harmony. Dissonance represents evil. The tracks on the record are the hymns, which represent the seven deadly sins, beginning from Track 3 to Track 10. Tracks one and two are the introduction.” The lineup’s timely and terrifying vision was first unveiled in Fall 2024 with the single “A Visceral Retch” inciting frenzied fans to call the song “a version of Whitechapel we have never heard before. Can’t explain how absolutely goddamn brutal this song is. This is a total dream come true.” The title track is the LP’s second single.  Whitechapel, who formed in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 2006, has seen the core lineup—vocalist Phill Bozeman; guitarists Ben Savage, Zach Householder and Alex Wade; bassist Gabe Crisp—intact since 2007, with the exception of the drummer Brandon Zackey, who has been playing with the band since 2022. While Hymns in Dissonance follows 2021’s Kin chronologically, the new album is actually somewhat of a sequel to This is Exile thematically, the three-word title Hymns in Dissonance representing that correlation.  Whitechapel started writing for the new album at Householder’s studio in June of 2023, following the band’s headlining tour for The Valley. Whitechapel stuck to a strict weekday schedule, the structure allowing for maximum creativity and minimum burnout. Householder produced Hymns in Dissonance, which allowed the musicians to seamlessly switch gears from preproduction to recording the full album without skipping a beat. The guitarist shadowed producer Mark Lewis a lot over the last five Whitechapel albums and bringing that influence inside the band is a “full circle moment for Householder and Whitechapel. “It’s cool that we can be self-sufficient and produce a record of this magnitude ourselves; not a lot of bands can say that.” Every detail on HID matters. “With song sequencing we like to try to make our albums as dynamic as possible,” Wade says. “We like to give the records a roller-coaster effect toggling the energy of the tracks up and down to keep the listener interested.” It was likewise critical that the album art tied into the music in a visceral, provocative way, or has Bozeman put it, “something simple but unsettling with a very classic feel. But not over the top with too many things to look at.” Guitarist Savage mocked up ideas for an eerie mask that would represent the cult leader in the album’s story. Whitechapel chose artist Rob Borbas, the European tattoo artist known as “Grind Design,” to create the cover. “He specializes in dark/cryptic tattoos, and we felt he would be able to take Savage’s idea with the mask and bring it to life,” Whitechapel explains. “He certainly met our expectations with a dark, evil, ominous piece that makes you question ‘what is that?’ when you look at it. We wanted the cover to be mysterious until you know more about the story of the album and how the cover applies to it.” Hymns in Dissonance sees the band reinventing themselves, going darker, deeper and heavier. While the songs all stand powerfully on their own, the throughline Bozeman says that “more than likely there will be a tour where we play the album from front to back.” Longtime fans will detect hints of the past within the brutality. To wit: the riff-tastic “Hate Cult Ritual” is the only song on the album with Drop A tuning, the tuning the first three Whitechapel albums used. Additionally, the Hymns in Dissonance chapter in Bozeman’s life finds the frontman living through his “past times,” or as he states, “the music that brought me here. Brutal, dark, aggressive, heavy music. Death metal, black metal, speed metal, etc. I truly believe that your roots call you back at some point in your life and this is that point in my life.” Vocally, the recording process allowed Bozeman to achieve all his goals. “Recording was on our time, so if I wasn't feeling it on a certain day, then I’d just stop, reset and go again the following day. I honed in more on the progression of the screaming vocals that I’m known for,” the singer says. “I really reworked my high vocals and tried some new different types of tones with my voice. Basically, a new-age feel to a classic sound.” At this stage in the game, the name Whitechapel commands the ultimate respect. Already sitting on one of the most enviable catalogs in contemporary metal, in 2019 they dropped The Valley, highlighting a confident evolution in their sound and standing as a true landmark release that sets a new standard for the genre.  With Bozeman exploring childhood trauma on 2019’s The Valley, it was their darkest release to-date. But with its 2021 successor, Kin, the story was darker still. With those chapters of Bozeman’s life exorcised lyrically, Hymns in Dissonance mines a darkness that’s not lyrically personal. And, says Wade, “I don't think HID follows Kin musically at all. If anything, it's the polar opposite. For this album it was fun to be able to just let loose and write ignorantly heavy music again. This album stands on its own,” Wade concludes. “Phil was able to create a fresh story to write about, which, in turn, helped us write music with a fresher sound.”

Khemmis is a doomed heavy metal band from Denver, CO. Formed in 2012, the group rose from the underground with their 2015 album Absolution. The following year, 2016’s Hunted ensnared critics and fans across the globe and was named album of the year by Decibel magazine and among the top metal albums of the year by Rolling Stone. After pursuing a busy touring schedule in Europe and North America, Khemmis returned with their third full-length record, Desolation, in late 2018 to further acclaim with the support of Nuclear Blast Records outside of the U.S. Widespread touring and festival performances followed before the band returned to writing new music, releasing a set of rarities and live album cuts to tide over fans with 2020’s Doomed Heavy Metal. Now, in 2021, Khemmis awakens from their slumber to unleash a new full-length album, their first backed by Nuclear Blast worldwide, and their darkest material yet, in the Fall.