Shogun (Trivium album)


Shogun is the fourth studio album by American heavy metal band Trivium. The album was released worldwide on various dates between September 23, 2008, and October 1, 2008, through Roadrunner Records. It is their last release to feature original drummer Travis Smith. Work on the album is noted to have begun with producer Nick Raskulinecz in October 2007, with the band stating that they chose not to work with Jason Suecof again as they wanted to explore new ideas.
It was cited as the band's best album by Bryan Rolli of Loudwire in 2025.

Background

In an interview with Metal Injection, Matt Heafy stated:
In an interview with Revolver, Corey Beaulieu stated:

Composition

Influences, style and themes

Shogun largely features a continuation of the band playing thrash metal, metalcore, and progressive metal, the latter exhibited by technical instrumentation and longer song lengths. It sees a prominent return of Matt Heafy's screaming vocals, which were a rare occurrence on The Crusade. The album is also the band's first album produced by Nick Raskulinecz. In an interview for About.com, Heafy described the album's musical direction as a combination of various aspects including: "the past, present, and future of Trivium, all on one CD" and that is the "next evolutionary step". When asked about the change in his singing style, he said: "It's the kind of thing that happened naturally."
Heafy had known of the term shogun and, learning more while visiting Japan, wanted to use it as a title around the time The Crusade was being released. Heafy brought it up again while writing the new album, feeling it encapsulated the album's sound. He cited Japanese, Greek, and Judeo-Christian themes as inspirations, such as the first song being named after kiri-sute gomen. While songs share themes, the album is not a concept album, and the songs use the themes to "further the lyrics even more" rather than directly retelling the stories.

Release and promotion

On June 16, 2008, Trivium posted a bulletin on their MySpace profile titled "New Album Update" with an embedded YouTube video, implying that the album would be released on September 30, 2008, by Roadrunner. On July 31, the first track from the new album, "Kirisute Gomen", was made available as a free digital download through the Roadrunner Records website for 24 hours only. On August 8, the cover art for the album was revealed. On August 12, the fourth track from the new album, "Into the Mouth of Hell We March", was made available for purchase on iTunes. On September 1, the third track from the album "Down from the Sky" was made available for purchase on iTunes, as well as in stores. On September 2, the music video for "Down from the Sky" was released on MySpace. The band would later upload "Throes of Perdition" to their MySpace page on September 17 and on September 23 the complete album was added.

Critical reception

The album received mostly positive reviews, with Chad Bowar of About.com praising the band's progress on songwriting, as well as their musicianship. Bowar finishing its review stating: "Shogun won't silence Trivium's legions of critics, but I think most fans will like the harsh vocals along with the great riffs and memorable melodies." Eduardo Rivadavia of AllMusic described Shogun as "Trivium's most challenging and ambitious album yet." IGN's Ed Thompson wrote that with the release of their fourth full-length album the "band have done what absolutely needed to be done." The band's ideas and influences were praised by Thompson, and considered Shogun the best of their first four albums. Thompson also defined Shogun as the band's "best effort to date."

Commercial performance

Since its release, Shogun has sold over 300,000 copies worldwide. In the United States in its first week of release sold 24,000 copies and debuted at number 23 on the Billboard 200 chart, and the top 100 in 18 other countries, including number 6 on the Japanese international charts, number 4 on the Canadian Hard Rock Charts, number 1 on the UK rock charts and number 4 on the Australian charts.
As of March 2009, the album has sold around 70,000 copies in the United States since its late September release, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Track listing

;Special edition DVD

Personnel

Trivium
Production