“The Crusade” marks the band’s third studio offering. After a thundering release like “Ascendancy” it’s a little a hard to believe that they can improve themselves in such a short period of time; however the band is clearly headed in the right direction. The album kicks off with “Ignition,” a track that certainly lives up to its name, with a furious riff at the beginning followed by Travis Smith’s hammering, a drummer that will surely raise a few eyebrows in the future. The song maintains a fast pace through out, with a small breakdown section at the 2:30 mark. The vocals on “Ignition” display the style of singing Matthew K. Heafy uses throughout the album, there are no cookie monster vocals in this album; clean vocals dominate every song with a lot of harmonizing. Heafy sounds comfortable with this, as the clean vocals don’t diminish the band’s heaviness.

“Ignition” is followed by “Detonation” which feels more like a sequel to the first track. The transition between both songs serves this purpose, and even the song titles show that Heafy is clearly doing it on purpose. The first two tracks are a statement that the band is nowhere near to change its old-school trash sound, it’s just a bit more polished, but things really take off with the third track “Entrance of the Conflagration,” which is also the first single of the new album. Rising vocals start the song only to be followed by an adrenaline filled guitar riff and a dark passage of lyrics sung in manic form by Heafy. This song also displays an impressive flow of riffs, melodies, vocals and inventive drum fills, all of them played at warp speed. After the adrenaline charge of “Entrance of the Conflagration” the band plays one of the most bizarre and enjoyable songs of the entire album in “Anthem (We Are the Fire).” I call it bizarre because the song is unlike anything that this band has ever written, as it feels more like something out of the Sunset Strip scene during the early 80’s. The song has monumental chorus that will surely become a crowd pleaser during the band’s future set list. “Anthem…” shows the band’s ability to think ahead of time, because quite a few of the songs are filled by hooks and catchy choruses; “And Sadness Will Sear,” “The Rising,” and the aforementioned track all create the same vibe and it’s hard not to want to sing along theses songs.

The melodic assault of vocals and guitar leads, which are played to perfection by Corey Beaulieu and Matt Heafy, constantly show how the band is growing musically. There is a near perfect balance of melody and aggression to be found on this record, where tracks like “Unrepentant,” “Becoming the Dragon,” “To the Rats” and “Tread the Floods” come out like a sledgehammer; and more mature and melodic tracks like “This World Can’t Tear Us Apart.” Keeping a tight grip on the cascade of guitars brought by both axmen, are Paolo Gregoletto (bass) and Travis Smith (drums) with trash rhythms that create enough sound to back up the band and also add new dimensions to the music.

The entire opus comes to a closure with the monstrous title track. “The Crusade” is an instrumental epic that runs over eight minutes in length, displaying all four members’ skills with their own instrument. Filled with driving drums, chugging bass lines and lacerating guitar work, this has to be one of the finest moments in trash metal history, as it weaves a musical story that will hypnotize more than one listener.

As a whole, “The Crusade” is an album filled with fast, razor sharp riffs, haunting vocals and a pummeling rhythm section. It does not surpass their previous effort “Ascendancy,” something that will be argued by the most avid Trivium fans, but it does give heavy metal fans one of the best thrash metal albums of the year.