Trivium “deleted everything” and re-recorded ‘Ascendancy’ after a problem with the tuning.
The heavy metal rockers made waves across the scene in 2005 when they dropped their second album – which includes singles like ‘Pull Harder on the Strings of Your Martyr’ – but it didn’t come easily.
Frontman Matt Heafy told Metal Hammer magazine: “We recorded and finished the entire record in drop D flat tuning. I remember coming tot he studio and [producer Jason Suecof] just had his head in his hands and he was like, ‘Oh no, no, no!’
“The whole record was slightly out of tune because that guitar wasn’t holding its pitch.
“So, we actually deleted everything, tuned the guitar up half a step, and redid the whole album again.”
Despite the setback, the US band recorded a masterpiece at the time, which they’ll be celebrating on a joint anniversary tour with Welsh rockers Bullet For My Valentine, who are also marking 20 years since their breakthrough album ‘The Poison’.
Heafy said: “For [BFMV frontman Matt Tuck] and I, these records in 2005 changed our lives. But we were only really able to see the impact 10, 15, 20 years later.
“A lot of the coolest metal bands that I love these days, I’ll talk to them and they’ll, say, ‘Trivium was my first live band I ever saw’. OR they’ll say ‘Ascendancy’ or ‘The Poison’ was their first record. That’s so cool.”
The two bands were closely linked two decades ago, but will hit the road together for the very first time when ‘The Poisoned Ascendancy’ tour kicks off in Cardiff, UK later this month.
Heafy added: “It almost feels like a once in a lifetime experience. A five-year or 10-year anniversary, that’s cool.
“But we knew we wanted to really hold on to this. ‘We’ve never done anything like it, so let’s wait for 20 years.’ It’s something special for sure.”