The Crusade (album)

Background

Before the album was released, three songs from the album were released on the band's MySpace: "Detonation", "Anthem (We Are the Fire)", and "Entrance of the Conflagration". Music videos for "Entrance of the Conflagration", "Anthem (We Are the Fire)", "The Rising", "To the Rats", and "Becoming the Dragon" were produced and released on Roadrunner's website.

In the United Kingdom, the album was released on October 9, and was certified silver in for sales in excess of 60,000 copies. The album peaked at number 7 in the UK. In the United States, the album debuted at No. 25 on the Billboard 200 albums chart on its release, selling 31,000 copies in the US in its first week. It has sold over 100,000 copies in the United States.

The track "Detonation" is available on the Xbox 360 release of the video game Guitar Hero II as downloadable content while the track "Anthem (We Are the Fire)" is featured on Burnout Dominator, Sleeping Dogs and Saints Row 2.

Musical style and lyrics

The album represents a drastic change in style from their previous album, Ascendancy, adopting a mostly thrash metal sound, and having metalcore characteristics such as breakdowns and growled vocals featured in metalcore kept to a very small minimum. As a result, vocalist Matt Heafy used a clean vocal style similar to James Hetfield throughout most of the record. Heafy justified this by noting that "the four of us were never into bands that scream and we don't like any of the current bands that scream, so we asked ourselves why we're doing it." However, growled vocals would return as a regular attribute on the band's proceeding album, Shogun as well as sometimes some breakdowns.

Lyrical themes on the album include famous killings. "Entrance of the Conflagration" is about Andrea Yates's murder of her five children, "Unrepentant" is about Nazir Ahmad's murder of his three daughters and stepdaughter, "Contempt Breeds Contamination" is about the death of Amadou Diallo, and "And Sadness Will Sear" is based upon the murder of Matthew Shepard. Another common theme on this album is unity or "being united" with songs like Anthem (We Are the Fire) and The Rising. Another lyrical theme that is noticed is in the song "Becoming the Dragon," which is based on the Japanese mythological story of the dragon (how the koi will swim up the waterfall known as "Dragon's Gate" where it is thus transformed into the mythological beast.

Track listing

All lyrics written by Matt Heafy.

Personnel

Trivium

Additional performers

Production