Trivium have now released an official statement regarding the addition of their new drummer Paul Wandtke, who replaces Mat Madiro in the outfit. You can read that below, with frontman Matt Heafy joking: “We get our drummers at Costco. We made the initial purchase back in ’99. We bought 4 for the price of 1.”
“We are writing this to let you all know that Trivium has amicably parted ways with Mat Madiro as our drummer.
Mat stepped up for us at a dire moment where it was either leave a tour, or carry on. With Mat, we will forever be eternally grateful of everything he helped us out with. Mat’s time filling in for us was much appreciated.Creatively though, we felt at this time we needed to make a change. And every change, every difficult decision and every evolution that Trivium has either decided, or been forced to make has been for the necessary for us to continue on as a functioning band. The things that go on behind the scenes that directly involve the Trivium members aren’t always apparent from an outside fan’s perspective.
With that said our new drummer is Paul Wandtke from Chicago,IL. With Paul, we took our careful time deciding exactly what had to happen and how.
We spent our time checking out, trying out and feeling out many drummers this time around. After much deliberation, Paolo said to Matt one day “you should hit up John Petrucci and see if he has an ideas.” We figured our friend John may have some ideas from the Berklee-world.
John brought Mike Mangini into the conversation and within minutes of describing our conundrum to Mike, he had a name: Paul Wandkte. Paul studied under Mike at Berklee, and obviously made an impression on a man we consider to be one of the greatest drummers on the planet.
Paul made his debut with us in thunderous fashion this past weekend by playing to 40,000 fans at Knotfest Mexico. And he nailed it. We hope to work with Paul for a long time and we hope the Trivium fans around the world welcome him with open arms.
Says Paul, “I was blown away when Trivium had contacted me. I have been looking for a place to call home all my life, a home of brothers with similar tastes in music, musicianship and goals. I’d like to thank Dream Theater‘s Mike Mangini for getting us in contact. I couldn’t be happier, this is literally life changing. Never give up, be yourself and rock on.”
In addition, Trivium frontman Matt Heafy will be undergoing surgery to fix a deviated septum, he offered:
“Alrighty friends. At 4:30 today I am finally getting my broken nose fixed (I broke it when I was a kid in karate – so fret not). It’s a septum deviation correction surgery with turbinate minimizing. At worst, my singing will be the same; at the best, my singing will be easier and better. I will be out of commission for a bit. Take care!”
Outside of what Heafy mentioned above, the surgery shouldn’t have any impact on the band’s upcoming January U.S. tour.
