MetalSucks recently sat down with Matt Heafy and Corey Beaulieu of Floridian metallers TRIVIUM, who are set to release their new album, Shogun, on via Roadrunner Records. Heafy and Beaulieu shed some light on the direction of the new album, working with a different producer this time around, and tempering fan criticisms and expectations of the band.

An excerpt from the interview follows:

MetalSucks: What about worrying about listener reaction? When Ascendancy came out, there wasn't a lot of anticipation for it. There weren't a lot of people who had interest. Now that you guys are one of the big bands out there today, everybody is anticipating the new album...

Corey Beaulieu: "I think with the last record there was more of an actual anticipation, I guess, because we already had a record and then everyone kind of wanted to hear what the next record was. And we made the complete opposite record, so now since we've had the last two records sound completely different, no one really knows what the new record is going to sound like.

So with this record, we kind of kept everything a secret and didn't let anyone know the title for the longest time or hear the songs or whatever. We were kind of really secretive about it and kind of created this buzz without even doing anything. Our fans didn't know what was going on. Everyone nowadays can know the fucking name of the album before they even record the damn thing. So we kind of wanted to keep some kind of mystery and excitement behind it, because you didn't know what anything was. So I think that kind of helps get and keep people's curiosity levels up.

Now with people, not everyone, but like a select amount of people getting a chance to hear some tracks or something like that... the response has been pretty overwhelming. Everyone who has heard it has totally dug it. Roadrunner has been fucking stoked on it and they all are like, "Dude, this is the best record you guys have done" and stuff. So it's, you know, the response and reactions after people have heard it, we're pretty psyched and pretty happy. Everyone's really taken to it. So now we're really excited to see what our fans think. Now we really want them to hear it. It's really fun to hear what the fans think, and if they love it then it's going to be even better."

Matt Heafy: "This album is like the make or break record. The last one had a lot of anticipation, I guess, but that one didn't have quite so much pressure. I think this one is the make or break record. So if we weren't coming into it prepared we'd be like "Oh fuck, you know this could be it. This could be the one." I think people who like Ascendancy are really curious to see what this one is going to sound like, since we just did two records that are very different, and now I think three records that are very different from each other, although Ascendancy and Ember are kind of comparable. It's going to be cool because we wrote on and off for about a year, demoed for 6 months out of that year... I mean there was so much going into the songwriting process this time. We went from 27 songs in garage band form down to like 20 tracks, like really good demos - demos that sound almost as good as a record, and then we whittled that down to 15, rewrote those songs and had Nick do new demos with us. So each song had been demoed like five different times to kind of "grow" the song. We were so prepared this time. The [actual] record, the tracking part was a piece of cake."

Read the full interview at MetalSucks.

Trivium's Shogun hits stores on September 29th in the UK, September 30th in North America via Roadrunner Records.

Shogun, mixed by Colin Richardson (SLIPKNOT, MACHINE HEAD, FEAR FACTORY), includes the following tracks: 'Kirisute Gomen', 'Torn Between Scylla And Charybdis', 'Down From The Sky', 'Insurrection', 'Into The Mouth Of Hell We March', 'Throes Of Perdition', 'He Who Spawned the Furies', 'Of Prometheus And The Crucifix', 'The Calamity', 'Like Callisto To A Star In Heaven', 'Shogun'.