Make no mistake: The Poisoned Ascendancy tour, on which BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE and TRIVIUM are celebrating their seminal records’ 20th anniversaries by playing them in full, says more about the metal scene in 2005 than 2025. Both The Poison and Ascendancy are major stops along the way in the story of 21st century metal and both attracted different audiences at the time. But, 20 years later, all tribalism has been put to the side, trumped by nostalgia for another era.
Bullet For My Valentine live @ The OVO Hydro, Glasgow. Photo Credit: Alan Swan PhotographyBoth bands are taking it in turns to close out the night across the tour. In Glasgow, BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE are up first, but not before a grainy montage of interviews, gigs, and magazine covers from around The Poison’s release. It’s a reminder of how quickly BULLET’s stock rose in a short time, achieved by having a toe in the burgeoning metalcore scene and another in the aesthetics of the dominant emo movement. If genre purists could look past how primed for MSN Messenger BULLET’s lyric were, there were plenty of riffs and harmonies to sink their teeth into.
BULLET celebrated The Poison for its 10th anniversary too, but never on this scale. This time round, they’re taking in the country’s biggest rooms and they’re bringing screens, lasers, and a METALLICA-like ‘hell hole’ at the front, in which fans have paid a pretty penny to be surrounded by rockstar walkways.
The album’s front-half is greeted with elation; the explosive power chords of 4 Words (To Choke Upon) and Tears Don’t Fall’s intro – the biggest crossover banger from both sets – bring the biggest cheers of the night. The real treat in full-album sets are the deep cuts, with Hit The Floor, Room 409, 10 Years Today, Cries In Vain, and The End absent from BULLET shows since the record’s last anniversary. The five-star b-sides represent what was a fertile period for the band, who have struggled critically to reach the acclaim of this early era (although undoubtedly still out-draw TRIVIUM worldwide).
Bullet For My Valentine live @ The OVO Hydro, Glasgow. Photo Credit: Alan Swan PhotographyAs far as nostalgia shows go, this one is a reminder of how essential BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE were when they came out of the gates with something to prove. They looked good on posters, knew how to structure a song, and made heavy music that didn’t feel like a boys’ club. It is when they kick off their encore with Knives, from 2021’s self-titled album, that the feeling the band’s best days are long behind them is hard to shake. BULLET came on the scene with a voice and something to say with it, but by comparison, Knives is formulaic and lacks identity among modern metal playlists.
But tonight is about The Poison and the thousands of people who’ve had all these choruses committed to memory for two decades. When it comes to records that paid homage to metal with its circle-pit mosh calls while gunning for the big leagues with radio-ready hooks, it is almost unrivalled since the turn of the millennium. A chance to hear it in full (sans Spit You Out, which is replaced by Hand Of Blood as on the anniversary edition of the album) is savoured and celebrated. For one night, BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE sound ready to take over the world again.
Rating: 8/10
Trivium live @ The OVO Hydro, Glasgow. Photo Credit: Alan Swan PhotographyIf BULLET brought the melodrama in 2005, TRIVIUM brought something more faithful. Frontman Matt Heafy spoke at the time of his love of METALLICA, and on this night, bassist Paolo Gregoletto is sporting one of their tees. Like Master Of Puppets before it, Ascendancy inspired a generation of metalheads to pick up a guitar and shout along to Pull Harder On The Strings Of Your Martyr in their bedroom.
For those who’ve followed Heafy’s vocal ups and downs over the years, this tour has an added note of anticipation. After years of training, metal’s foremost disciplinarian has managed to recreate his raw vocals from the Ascendancy era. On social media, he’s hyped just how much this will bring to TRIVIUM shows going forward. The verdict? He’s never sounded better. As soon as he opens his mouth, it’s clear he’s levelled up and gone full beast mode. It’s utterly monstrous.
The Ascendancy half of the show is therefore less nostalgic; this is a victory lap, a pitstop along the way to a future still full of potential and artistic development. TRIVIUM’s recent run of records, from The Sin And The Sentence through to In The Court Of The Dragon, are all fine-tuned pieces of heavy metal. With Heafy on the form of his life and the band coming off of a creative purple patch, nothing is stopping them reaching for the lofty heights of Ascendancy and Shogun for years to come.
Trivium live @ The OVO Hydro, Glasgow. Photo Credit: Alan Swan PhotographyThe division between both bands in 2005 is noticeable still: BULLET’s set is an ode to emotional adolescence, while TRIVIUM’s worships the canon of thrash and Swedish melodic death metal. TRIVIUM don’t have a Tears Don’t Fall, despite the respite of Dying In Your Arms, so it’s the chaos of late-record songs like The Deceived that elevate their set. In Scotland’s biggest arena, it sets multiple circle pits in motion and gets crowd surfers over the barrier again and again, while Heafy stands like a tattooed Spartan encouraging the melee.
An encore of In Waves is a safe option after a night of deep cuts for devoted fans, but TRIVIUM bow out with their flame as ferocious as ever. Heafy is noted for his perfectionism and has spoken about the band rehearsing for this tour since early 2024. It shows: the set is an effortless and straight-forward clinic in which 20-year-old songs sound as vital as ever. If there’s any element of competition between the co-headliners – who could headline Glasgow’s Hydro on their own, for example – TRIVIUM are the ones who still feel truly ascendant.
Rating: 8/10
Check out our photo gallery of the night’s action in Glasgow from Alan Swan Photography here:
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