Album Rating: 4.5

This is hitting my city on my birthday. As a very dedicated Trivium fanboy with BTBAM also in my top 5, this is as good of a birthday gift I could've ever asked for.

that is awesome!!! grats!

Album Rating: 4.0

Guess I should give this a go again. I liked it, but didn't listen to it too much when it came out

Album Rating: 4.5

Trivium touring with BTBAM? Now that they are finally doing a headline tour with an actually good supporting act I think I'll finally pull the trigger on seeing them

Album Rating: 5.0

you should, they're great live

Whitechapel's live show is pretty massive and intense. They just might blow all of the other bands on the tour away ngl. Should be a great tour. All of the bands on the bill are solid.

Album Rating: 4.5

Trivium with Alex Bent is a sight to see, I wouldn't set Whitechapel above them so fast.



Only band on this tour I haven't yet seen is Khemmis and doom is always fun live so this should be a well-rounded bop of a tour.

I've yet to see Trivium live. Never been a big fan but I would like to see them regardless. Hopefully I can catch this tour but looking at the dates, it probably won't work out for me.

drunkenly reading pizza's machine head review last night randomly sent me down a mid 00s rabbit hole and I wound up listening to this album

it's honestly really good for what it is. its kind of funny, if they went from ember -> ascendancy -> this -> shogun it would sound like a coherent career progression

they've been more productive than average with 10 albums in 18 years but also seems like they've had more unforced errors than average

the other thing that's interesting is that its sometimes unintentional production accidents that give them their character. this drummer is a lot better than the one that played on ascendancy, but ascendancy's drums feel like a much more central and defining feature. they're totally triggered and lacking dynamics and the bass drum is super prominent in the mix but that gives it a really thunderous and driving sound that carries a number of the songs. here, the drumming is much better and the drum mix is more balanced, but never sounds quite as powerful

Album Rating: 4.0

I feel the production on their last few records in general is holding them back a bit. Although imo they never really had great production, except for Shogun.

Album Rating: 3.0

ascendancy had good production

Album Rating: 2.5

Shogun had amazing production tbh

Album Rating: 4.5

I'd even say Crusade sounds really good as well



But yeah... production def holds back the last three albums... especially this one

Album Rating: 4.0

Josh Wilbur needs to be kept away from the mixing board.

@Pika - Ascendancy was a pretty early audiohammer production. Guitars and vocals were recorded well as always but Jason suecof was still learning and payed the guy from morrisound to teach him some stuff. A lot of the drums were tracked at morrisound. The drummer they had back then was pretty crap, so whether due to performance or engineering issues, the drums were triggered to hell. The kick drum sounds totally inhuman, but it actually enhances that album a lot

@Alex - Crusade production was pretty basic and stripped down and IIRC the band later wasn't happy with it and mentioned that it sounded small. I agree with that sentiment

To be honest I have no problem with the production on this album. I didn't spend any time with the last two so can't really comment but it sounds fine here to me. For whatever reason I'm not hearing the problems everyone is mentioning on this one.

I wonder if there's different versions of this album out there. One guy who told me it sounded like shit said he was streaming from youtube music, whereas I'm listening on spotify. To me there's nothing special about the production here but there's nothing particularly offensive about what I'm hearing, pretty standard fare for this type of music. Some of the climactic moments still sound big enough, and despite the songwriting lacking a lot of dynamics I didn't get any ear fatigue listening through this

Album Rating: 4.5

"@Alex - Crusade production was pretty basic and stripped down"



that's all this band needs imo



guess you could say its as much an arrangement issue (what with all the orchestral stuff and extra layers to Heafy's vocals on recent albums) as it is production. Not so bad on the previous two albums but a lot of the climactic moments on here sound completely washed out to me. Can barely make out what is going on under Heafy's vocals during the t/t's chorus for instance, shit sounds like a phil spector production at points. as you sorta alluded to in a previous comment but not entirely, its the drums that suffer a lot from it.



lesser complaint but the guitar tones are honestly not all that great imo, let alone anywhere near as good as the 2000s albums. its a testament to the songwriting and performances here that my rating is as high as it is lmao

Album Rating: 4.5

okay i'm listening to the album again for the first time in a while on spotify and it sounds... quite a bit better??



like what the fuck i swear it did not always sound like this

Album Rating: 4.0

Someday people will change their minds about Crusade, I swear.

Album Rating: 2.5

comparing the spotify to the youtube version of the t/t, the spotify has noticeably more lower-end and bass, which I think might also make the vox sit a little better in the mix?

Album Rating: 4.5

Yeah Crusade definitely doesn't deserve below a 3 average, you could argue that for VF and Silence. They just received peak hate back then.

Agreed it sounds much better on Spotify vs. YouTube.