Trivium‘s Matt Heafy has chosen Mrityu as the moniker for his new extreme metal side project. He recently spoke at length with Metalinsider.net about the project. When asked about how long he has been working on it, he stated:
“It’s been… I mean, I was in a black metal band when I was 16. I was in a tech death metal band as well, a band called Capharnaum with the bass player from Monstrosity [Mike Poggione], and the guitarist from Martyr [Daniel Mongrain] and Jason Suecof [who produced the first three Trivium albums]. And I was in a black metal band called Mindscar for about six months where I was just the lead guitar player/back up vocalist.
But that singer [Richie Brown] got me into black metal at the time, and a lot of those bands I was really into. So it’s something that I’ve conceptualized of doing, but never had the motivation to sit down and make it happen. It was intended to be the “true” style and was going to be completely under an alias. No one was ever going to know who was in the band, what country they were from, or anything like that.
I really wanted to give it its true chance because I knew with that genre people are very elitist, and I knew that if I wanted to get to the “true” people who love that genre, if they saw my name attached they’d never listen.
So it was going to be that, but then I briefly started chatting back and forth with Ihsahn [Emperor] and I got into his solo record, started to get into the stuff he’s musically been influenced by, and it just expanded my palate. Through that record, and when I started revisiting how much I’m into [Opeth’s] Blackwater Park, it made me realize that I can take the ingredients of a genre that I love and further it as if I had done albums with that and turn it into something else.
It’s hard because I was looking online and something said “extreme black metal,” but that’s not the term. It’s derived from genres of extreme metal. But yeah, it’s going to be really hard to name a genre, I tried myself when I listen to it and it’s… What’s nice is that with Trivium there’s a set thing of what we can and can’t do, not saying I feel limited by the band, but there are things that I know that are and aren’t our sound through experimenting.
And with this [Mrityu] I can do anything. The songs can go into any direction, any tangent, anything that I feel, and I can be very selfish about the project, which is very nice.”
He later revealed that he has three songs written for the project thus far and hopes to have Ihsahn produce the offering. For more on that and the Trivium‘s plans, which include recording their next full-length in February, head over to the full interview.
