Trivium's new record Silence In The Snow has been pretty divided when it comes to reactions. Some people love its more clean vocal'ed approach, while others don't like it and think it's a digression from the band's usual heaviness. Guitarist Corey Beaulieu says in an interview with Stereoboard that whether or not you think the music is heavy, it's not screaming that defines the heaviness of the music.
"Screaming isn't the thing that defines heaviness," Beaulieu explained. "We've done screaming on every record and we don't want to write the same thing over and over again. On 'In Waves', there were songs that were all screaming — which we'd never done before — and some that were all singing. We can go to different extremes … Heavy metal started with Black Sabbath and it took what, like, 15 or 20 years before anyone introduced what became screaming — with Venom or something? So in the '70s, you had all these tough, dark riffs with great vocalists: [Rob] Halford, [Bruce] Dickinson, [Ian] Gillan, [Ronnie James] Dio. They had these larger-than-life, amazing voices, and that's the fuckin' basis of what heavy metal grew from. The great thing about metal is people are always trying to expand the boundaries."
Personally, I think the word "heavy" is just an amorphous term that doesn't really have a specific definition so much as it does lets you know to what extreme a band has gone. If I tell you the new Megadeth song is heavy, you'll think "heavy" in terms of how heavy Megadeth has been in the past. If I tell you the new Black Tongue song is "heavy," you're not equating it the same way.
That being said, it's worth throwing in there that anyone that tries to use "heavy" as a measurement for why one band is better than another is just plain dumb. Thoughts?
