Trivium bassist Paolo Gregoletto has addressed the backlash they faced following their decision to tour with Asking Alexandria, I See Stars, Motionless In White and more later this week.
Speaking with Metal Insider, the following exchange took place:
“I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but it’s also somewhat surprising to see you playing with a band like Asking Alexandria.
Yeah, that was a really random tour offer. When we got it, we were like “Alright… that’s different.” It wasn’t something we were actually planning on doing, but we looked at it objectively and were like “Alright, we just did the Dream Theater tour,” and that was a really outside the box tour. I’m sure a lot of people were saying the same thing, like “Oh, Trivium touring with Dream Theater? That’s kinda weird!”
But we did it, it was a totally different experience. When you’re outside the box, and not playing the normal tour, like I’d consider this [tour with In Flames, Veil Of Maya and Kyng] to be a comfortable tour. 99.9% of the people [we’re playing for] know who we are, into what we do. Us and In Flames fit very well together.
The Dream Theater tour, to me it’s as far left as you can go, and as far right as you can go with Asking Alexandria, which is a heavy band but not in “this” heavy world. Like that’s the Warped Tour heavy metal, and not saying that in a derogatory way at all. Literally there is another heavy scene that exists and parallels in some ways and in some ways so different.
Our whole thing was when we got the offer, what were we going to be doing in that time anyway? Originally, I think we were possibly going down to South America with some other bands, and that would have been amazing. But the focus of this album has been the U.S. and hitting it as hard as possible and from every angle.
We were just like “You know what, we should do this. It’s going to be way different.” A lot of people that are into our band might not like that we’re doing it, but to stay relevant and to keep new people coming into our music, we have to do tours like this. I am definitely looking forward to it because if it really is as many new kids as I’m hoping it is and kids that are that young, there very impressionable.
If they’ve never heard us, we could be their gateway into this side of the heavy world. And that’s just the way I look at it. Either way, we’re playing the same music that we would be playing on these kind of tours.
I knew a lot of kids would be at first shocked by it, but at the same time I know a lot of kids will come out and see and support us. It’s going to be a good time either way, and we have more touring that’s outside the box that we haven’t done. Like these radio festivals, we’ve never done this stuff!
And that’s another heavy world that’s separate from Warped Tour and Mayhem heavy metal. We’re doing Rocklahoma, Rock On The Range, we’re doing a bunch of shows with Five Finger Death Punch on off dates. I think we got a good ten or twelve festivals that we’ve never done. It’s a new world for us, like the acoustic thing. We’ve never experienced that, and I’m sure these festivals are going to be cool
They’ll be more like what the European Festivals are than Mayhem is because they’re stand alone festivals, bands travel in. So in a way, it’s kind of a mirror of what we’re doing the next month when we’re going to Europe.”
Other topics covered in the aforementioned interview include the bands new album, 360 deals and band frontman/guitarist Matt Heafy‘s infamous royalty check tweet.
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