Heafy hoped to keep black metal band anonymous

Trivium frontman Matt Heafy says his black metal side-project Mrityu was meant to be a secret before the cat got out of the bag.

Heafy is working with ex Emperor mainman Ihsahn on the project and says it will be “a dream come true” when the material sees the light of day.

He tells Revolver: “Mrityu was initially intended to be a black metal band that I was never going to tell anybody I was in. I was going to make the music, and it was going to be pretty true to the 90s second wave-style-black metal — sort of like Darkthrone, early Dimmu Borgir, early Emperor. But while Mrityu has its roots in black metal, it’s become something so much more. It’s not just black metal — it’s anything I’ve ever wanted to try.

“Ihsahn from Emperor will be producing it, and he’s co-written several songs with me. We’ll also be recording it in Notodden, Norway, where all the Emperor records were done.”

Ihsahn and Trivium’s busy schedules are holding back progress on the project, but Heafy hopes it’ll happen soon.

He adds: “It’s just a matter of when. Ihsahn is incredibly busy and so is Trivium. But he and I stay in contact and we pass things back and forth. And we have quite a few songs written and quite a few demos. It’s going to be a dream come true when it happens.”

Trivium released their seventh album Silence In The Snow last month.

Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock'n'roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.