Shogun (将軍, Shōgun) listen^ⓘ is the fourth studio album by American heavy metal band Trivium. The album was released worldwide on various dates between September 23, 2008, and October 1, 2008, through Roadrunner Records. It is their last release to feature original drummer Travis Smith. Work on the album is noted to have begun with producer Nick Raskulinecz in October 2007,^[2] with the band stating that they chose not to work with Jason Suecof again as they wanted to explore new ideas.^[3]

In an interview with Metal Injection,^[4] Matt Heafy stated:

We started demoing after Family Values, like October... We started writing some songs, demoing them. The demo quality is so good it sounds like a real album, which is awesome, so it gives us a really good basis to compare and fix shit, so we've been revising and going back in and changing shit up. We're doing another set of demos. I think we're probably going to have 30 songs to pick from and we're working with Nick Raskulinecz (who produced for Foo Fighters, Rush, Velvet Revolver, Shadows Fall and Stone Sour).

In an interview with Revolver,^[5] Corey Beaulieu stated:

We want to capture the best ingredients of everything we've done. Each song has a little bit of everything, going between something heavy and then melodic, and then back to something heavy. So it has a really interesting balance. On The Crusade, Matt did almost all singing, so this time we're bringing back some of the screaming that's on Ascendancy.

On June 16, 2008, Trivium posted a bulletin on their MySpace profile titled "New Album Update" with an embedded YouTube video,^[14] implying that the album would be released on September 30, 2008, by Roadrunner. On July 31, the first track from the new album, "Kirisute Gomen", was made available as a free digital download through the Roadrunner Records website for 24 hours only. On August 8, the cover art for the album was revealed. On August 12, the fourth track from the new album, "Into the Mouth of Hell We March", was made available for purchase on iTunes. On September 1, the third track and first single from the album "Down from the Sky" was made available for purchase on iTunes, as well as in stores. On September 2, the music video for "Down from the Sky" was released (exclusively) on MySpace.^[15] The band would later upload "Throes of Perdition" to their MySpace page on September 17 and on September 23 the complete album was added.^[16]

More information Aggregate scores, Source ...

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	66/100[17]
Review scores
Source	Rating
About.com	[7]
AllMusic	[1]
IGN	[18]
Rock Sound	[citation needed]
Ultimate-Guitar.com	[19]
MetalSucks	[20]
PopMatters	[10]
Sputnikmusic.com

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The album received mostly positive reviews, with Chad Bowar of About.com praising the band's progress on songwriting, as well as their musicianship.^[7] Bowar finishing its review stating: "Shogun won't silence Trivium's legions of critics, but I think most fans will like the harsh vocals along with the great riffs and memorable melodies."^[7] Eduardo Rivadavia of AllMusic described Shogun as "Trivium's most challenging and ambitious album yet."^[1] IGN's Ed Thompson wrote that with the release of their fourth full-length album the "band have done what absolutely needed to be done."^[18] The band's ideas and influences were praised by Thompson, and considered Shogun the best of their first four albums.^[18] Thompson also defined Shogun as the band's "best effort to date."^[18]

Since its release, Shogun has sold over 300,000 copies worldwide.^[21] In the United States in its first week of release sold 24,000 copies and debuted at number 23 on the Billboard 200 chart,^[22] and the top 100 in 18 other countries, including number 6 on the Japanese international charts, number 4 on the Canadian Hard Rock Charts, number 1 on the UK rock charts and number 4 on the Australian charts. As of March 2009, the album has sold around 70,000 copies in the United States since its late September release, according to Nielsen SoundScan.^[23]

Special edition DVD

• The Making of Shogun (A behind-the-scenes documentary capturing the making of the album)
• Shogun: The Riffs (Instructional videos for guitar and bass)

Trivium^[26]

• Matt Heafy – lead vocals, guitars
• Corey Beaulieu – guitars, unclean backing vocals
• Paolo Gregoletto – bass, clean backing vocals
• Travis Smith – drums, percussion

Production

• Nick Raskulinecz – producer
• Paul Fig – engineer
• Nick Raskulinecz – engineer
• Ben Terry – engineer
• Colin Richardson – mixing (1–11)
• Jeffrey Rose – mixing (12–14), mixing engineer
• Martin "Ginge" Ford – mixing engineer
• Matt Wiggins – assistant engineer
• Mark Lewis – pre-production engineer
• Ted Jensen – mastering