Trivium Frontman Matt Heafy Talks Touring With In Flames, Covering Iron Maiden + More

Trivium frontman Matt Heafy appeared on Full Metal Jackie's radio show over the weekend. Heafy talked about the band's just-wrapped tour with In Flames, performing an Iron Maiden cover and the band's future tour plans. If you missed Jackie's show, check out her Q&A with Heafy below:

Tell me how the Trivium / In Flames Tour has been going so far.

This tour has been amazing. As a whole, we've played bigger shows in the U.S. for festivals and stuff, but this is the best North American tour we've ever been on as far as reactions go. Every single night it's like the best show of the tour and then the next night it's even better, and then the next night is ever better and it just keeps topping itself. It's been really amazing.

This is our seventh or eighth tour with In Flames and now we're hanging out with them all the time. We're playing this Swedish board game that they got a prototype of - it's been a really good one [tour]. We took [opening acts] Veil of Maya and Kyng out to local pizza places in Medford, Oregon, after the Super Bowl the other day and we actually found a really good pizza place with draft beer and handmade dough and everything - in Medford of all places.

Being that you've been on tour with In Flames numerous times -- on this tour what has been the highlight for you?

I think due to the fact of how good it is, because we've toured with them so many times. When we toured with them in 2006, we were direct support - so exact slot, same time, same bands except there was DevilDriver and Zao before us. On that tour I got egged. We got heckled numerous nights, bottled with glass bottles, shot glasses, plastic bottles, bottles filled with piss, kids waiting for us outside our van threatening us - same cities, same amount of people and it was really rough.

This time around, 100% of the crowd are completely into our show every single night and every single night keeps getting better. So the fact that we can see how much the U.S. has come around for us is pretty amazing. It look a little while. We've been a band since 1999 and touring since 2004 - and now the excitement is as if we're some new band or something.

You guys just played an acoustic cover of 'Iron Maiden' during a radio appearance, which we got to see online. What other tunes do you guys like to cover at rehearsal or during soundcheck?

We've covered 'Iron Maiden' acoustically and non-acoustically, we've done 'Master of Puppets,' we did 'Cemetery Gates' when the Dimebag Darrell thing just happened, we've done 'Walk.' We've done sections where Nick's kick pedal broke and when that happens to a metal band you kinda have to make some jokes or figure something out, so I did Blink-182's 'Dammit.' I brought that back - I used to do that back in the day for like 30 seconds. Rammstein's 'Du Hast,' we used to do five to fifteen seconds of like twenty songs. We don't do that anymore - we should learn a full song.

We're talking about putting together more fun stuff. If we do covers, we're going to do stuff that people haven't done because it seems like everyone's covering Maiden, Metallica, Pantera, Slayer, Testament - so we maybe want to do the next generation of bands that have influenced us.

I know you guys have your touring schedule put together like two years in advance, so what can we expect for the rest of 2012 after this tour?

The day this tour finishes in Chicago we fly to Australia for Soundwave with System of a Down, Slipknot, No Doubt, In Flames - so it'll be like our ninth tour with In Flames. Basically every other band that exists including a ton of '90s nu-metal bands [will be there]. So we'll be doing that, fly back to Los Angeles to begin the Asking Alexandria support tour. It's Asking Alexandria, Trivium, a band yet to be known, which was Dir En Grey, but their singer has to have surgery so they're gonna flip it in with someone else. Then three other bands are on there as well.

After that tour we're home for a day and then I believe we're doing the Revolver Golden Gods show - I'm not sure if its been confirmed or what. I don't know if we're doing it for sure - we might be doing that. Then fly back, have a couple weeks off, do all the U.S. radio rock festivals, a bunch of off-dates. I don't know if these are confirmed or not but it's with Five Finger Death Punch, which we're really excited about, a couple more festivals, then all the European festivals. We're doing some shows with Metallica when they're doing the 'Black Album' thing and then back home. Then maybe South America, Mexico, Asia, Japan, Australia and then finishing with a European headlining tour.

This coming weekend, Full Metal Jackie will have legendary Ministry frontman Al Jourgensen on her show. Full Metal Jackie can be heard on radio stations around the country — for a full list of stations, go to fullmetaljackieradio.com.