Review by Shadowdoom9 (Andi) for Trivium - The Sin and the Sentence (2017)
Just when you thought the screaming is gone, it's back! Since losing his screaming voice, Matt Heafy started taking actual voice lessons, and eventually in 2016 he regained his power to scream, now easier and more powerful than ever in his entire Trivium career. This also gave the band the opportunity to bring back their beloved original thrash-metalcore sound, along with some songs still in the classic heavy metal category.
The Sin and the Sentence is a diverse combination pretty much most of the good Trivium had in their previous albums. Once again, the album has the clean singing from every Trivium album, as well as the returning harsh vocals from most Trivium albums, absent mostly in The Crusade and gone entirely in Silence in the Snow. It also marks the return of thrashy riffs used in a common basis, similar to the band's first 4 albums, especially The Crusade and Shogun. Now that I think about it, The Sin and the Sentence can sort of be Shogun 2.0. Basically, this Trivium album has the most metal ingredients stirred together in a long time.
The title track begins with a 30-second build-up intro that was removed in the digital version, before heading straight to the song itself, which, along with "Beyond Oblivion", brings back a lot about Trivium you've missed; searing screaming vocals, greatly fired-up guitar solos, and blazing blast beats. "Beyond Oblivion" has probably the best chorus on the album. "Other Worlds" and "The Heart From Your Hate" are a couple mid-tempo songs with only clean singing that aren't totally the best, but the latter song is a nice anthem to sing along to.
"Betrayer" and "The Wretchedness Inside" are two more furiously astonishing tracks that once again bring back the aggression from their earlier material. However, "The Wretchedness Inside" has some Slipknot-esque vocals right before the breakdown in the middle which doesn't fit too well with the album. "Endless Night" has some hardcore riffs but it is actually a ballad-ish song instead of metalcore. "Sever the Hand" really kicks things up to high gear and has a darker thrash metal-influenced sound.
"Beauty in the Sorrow" is another mid-tempo song but still has a good balance between heaviness and melody. Then for the first time in a long time, the band delivers us a 7-minute epic, The Revanchist, which has more progressive elements than many of the other songs in the album. Not exactly "Shogun" (the song), but I'll take it! What a solid and interesting piece that is. But wait, there's still one more song left for this album, the chaotic closer "Thrown Into the Fire". Heafy showcases a lot of his screaming potential with not as many clean vocals as the previous songs. The song has an epic aggressive chorus and some flaming high-pitched progressive guitar solos which, to be honest, sound almost like part of the chorus from "The Root of All Evil" by Dream Theater.
We now have an album that is one of Trivium's finest hours (literally almost an hour). It's in around the same level as Shogun, but doesn't really top the two best Trivium albums, Ascendancy and In Waves. Once again, with the return of Heafy's harsh vocals and the band's heavier side, their signature thrash-metalcore sound is back. I don't know what their upcoming Trivium album would be like once it comes out in 2020, but I can't wait for what comes next!
Favorites: The Sin and the Sentence, Beyond Oblivion, The Heart From the Hate, Betrayer, Endless Night, The Revanchist, Thrown Into the Fire