Interview TRIVAN

From Zagreb’s underground roots to a darker, more expansive vision, TRIVAN explores transformation, personal truth, and the power of confronting darkness through uncompromising black metal.

1. TRIVAN was founded in Zagreb in 2018, but the COVID-19 pandemic became a major turning point for the band. How did that period change TRIVAN’s musical direction, identity, and overall purpose?

When TRIVAN started in 2018, it was much more like a traditional band.

We wanted to write heavy music, rehearse, play live and see where it would take us.

Then COVID stopped everything.

After the first wave, our drummer changed jobs and decided that he wanted to focus more on work and his family. In the past, something like that probably would have made me give up. That was actually one of the reasons I had stopped making music before. I was tired of constantly rebuilding bands and feeling that every time something started moving forward, I had to return to the beginning again.

This time I reacted differently.

I remember thinking that I was too old to keep repeating the same cycle and quitting whenever something went wrong. I wanted to continue.

So Ivan and I decided that instead of waiting for the perfect lineup, we would simply keep writing.

That became a strange kind of freedom.

When we first formed TRIVAN, most of us were returning to music after very long breaks. For many of us it had been ten years or more. In my case, I had not seriously played for around seven years. Because of that, we were often writing around what we were technically capable of performing at that moment, especially what our drummer could play.

Once that limitation disappeared, our thinking changed completely.

Instead of asking, “Can our current drummer play this?”, we started asking, “What does this song actually need?”

We decided to write the music exactly as we imagined it and then find musicians capable of playing it.

So what initially looked like another step backwards actually became the moment TRIVAN started moving forward creatively. We stopped adjusting the music to our limitations and started building toward the sound we really wanted.

2. Your music is rooted in introspection, resistance, transformation, and personal truth. When you begin writing a new song, does the music usually come first, or does a particular idea, emotion, or personal experience drive the composition?

Usually something happens first.

It can be an experience, an emotion, a situation in my life or simply something that stays in my head and needs to come out.

Then I pick up the guitar and start playing.

I normally build almost the entire song instrumentally first. I follow the feeling rather than trying to force it into a predetermined structure. The music becomes the emotional framework for whatever I am trying to express.

The lyrics come from the same source, but my writing process is almost the opposite of being economical.

For one song I can easily start with three or four pages of text, images, emotions, fragments and thoughts. I basically throw everything onto the page first.

Then the real work begins.

I cut it down, reshape it and adapt it to the music until only the parts that truly belong there remain.

That is also why TRIVAN lyrics can sometimes be quite broad and full of imagery. They usually begin as a much larger emotional picture and are gradually reduced until they fit the song.

Even if only a small part of that original text survives, everything that was written still influences the final result.

3. You describe TRIVAN as “a state of consciousness.” What does that idea mean to you personally, and how do you try to translate it into sound?

For me, saying that TRIVAN is a state of consciousness means that it is not only a band name or a musical style.

It is a process of becoming completely honest with yourself.

Sometimes you have to go very deeply into darkness before you can find peace.

We spend a huge part of our lives carrying expectations that come from other people, society, family, fear, habit or simply the image we have created of who we are supposed to be.

For me, real transformation begins when those things start falling away.

When you remove the chains, the expectations and the roles that no longer belong to you, you eventually have to confront yourself without excuses.

That can be painful and frightening because sometimes you discover things about yourself that you do not want to see.

But only when you become truly honest with yourself can you begin to become what you actually are rather than what you were taught or expected to be.

And I believe that is where real peace can eventually come from.

That is why darkness in TRIVAN is not the destination. It is a place you sometimes have to pass through in order to understand yourself.

Musically I try to express that through contrast. Chaos and control, aggression and atmosphere, despair and strength.

The songs can go very deeply into darkness, but there is always supposed to be movement inside them.

4. The concept of Trivanism explores themes such as questioning authority, rejecting blind obedience, personal truth, equality, consent, and transformation. How important is it for you that listeners understand the philosophy behind the music?

The philosophy is very important to me, but I never want TRIVAN to become another ideology telling people what they are supposed to think.

That would completely contradict the point.

For me, one of the most beautiful things about TRIVAN is that everybody has a different battle, a different past and a different version of themselves that they are trying to become.

My path is only my path.

For one person, becoming the best possible version of themselves might mean becoming an athlete. For somebody else it might mean becoming a chef, a gardener, a musician, a parent or something completely different.

There is no single final form that everybody is supposed to reach.

What is universal is the need to become honest with yourself.

Sometimes that honesty only appears when you go deep enough into your own darkness that expectations, roles and excuses begin to disappear.

Then you have to ask yourself who you actually are and what you genuinely want your life to be.

So, if somebody simply likes a TRIVAN song, that is already beautiful to me. Music should work as music first.

But if someone wants to look deeper, then Trivanism is an invitation.

Not an invitation to learn my truth and blindly follow it.

My truth is based on my experiences and my life. Somebody else has to find their own.

If anything from my experience helps another person find the courage to follow their own path, then that is exactly what I would want.

The principle is actually very simple:

Know yourself. Understand yourself. Be yourself.

And allow other people the same freedom.

The point is not for people to think like me.

The point is for people to discover who they are.

5. Your approach treats darkness not as an ending, but as a place where illusion is stripped away and truth can be confronted. How has this perspective influenced the way you write lyrics?

I think every real transformation hurts.That does not mean suffering is automatically good or that pain should be romanticized. It simply means that changing something deeply rooted in yourself usually requires effort, discomfort and confrontation.

The most basic example is physical training.

You go to the gym or start doing a sport and your muscles hurt. You are tired. Sometimes everything hurts the next day.

But your body is adapting.

That discomfort is part of a process that eventually makes you stronger, more capable and more resilient.

Obviously personal and psychological transformation is much more complicated than muscle soreness, but the principle is similar.

Progress usually asks something from you.

You have to leave something behind. You have to admit something. You have to confront something you were avoiding. Sometimes you have to destroy a version of yourself that was comfortable but was no longer healthy.

That is why pain appears so often in TRIVAN lyrics. Not because pain itself is the goal, but because transformation almost always passes through some form of it.

The question is what you do with that pain afterward.

Does it leave you trapped, or does it become part of something that makes you stronger, more aware and more honest with yourself?

6. Tracks such as “Dark Malicious Desire,” “Blackened Heart’s Pledge,” “Dance of Death,” and “Abyss of Crawling Shadows” explore obsession, mortality, confrontation, and the darker layers of the self. Is there a common emotional or conceptual thread connecting these songs?

Yes, completely, but the interesting thing is that I did not sit down at the beginning with a master plan for a concept album.

The album almost created itself through what was happening in my life.

Ivan and I had other material before these songs. I personally still have around twenty songs that are almost finished in one form or another.

But every time something significant happened in my life, a new song would suddenly appear and push itself in front of everything else.

That song became more urgent than whatever I had planned to work on next.

So the songs that became this album appeared because the events behind them happened when they did.

Looking back now, it almost feels as if the universe interfered alittle and decided what this album was supposed to become.

“Dark Malicious Desire” begins the descent.

“Blackened Heart’s Pledge” is the decision to stop being passive.

“Dance of Death” confronts mortality and the realization that none of us has unlimited time.

“Abyss of Crawling Shadows” reaches one of the deepest points, where collapse, grief and everything you have avoided finally surrounds you.

And then the perspective begins to change.

So although we are releasing the tracks individually, to me they are chapters of one real period of my life.

That is probably why the story feels natural to me now. I did not invent a story and then write songs to fit it.

I lived through something, songs came out of it, and only afterward did I realize that together they had become one story.

7. With Tomislav Žiljak and Robert Vlašić bringing their experience from Darkendome, and Marin Buljan joining on rhythm guitar in 2025, how has the current lineup changed TRIVAN’s sound and creative chemistry?

The writing process in TRIVAN is probably a little different from what people might imagine when they think of a traditional band.

I write the complete song.

That includes the guitars, structure, lyrics and even a fairly detailed idea of what the drums should be doing. I normally prepare the whole musical picture before the other members receive it.

Then each person recreates that material through their own instrument and inevitably adds part of themselves through interpretation and performance.

Ivan is the exception in one important way because he writes his own bass parts. I give him the song and the framework, but the actual bass lines are his.

Tomislav brings his own personality through the vocal performance. I can write the words and imagine the emotion, but the way he delivers them gives them another dimension.

With Robert, I normally prepare the drum concept first. Then he looks at what I have programmed or imagined, tells me what works naturally for a real drummer and what needs to change, and develops it in his own way. So the foundation comes from my composition, but his experience makes it more organic and playable.

In the studio I record all of the guitars myself.

Marin's role is primarily to strengthen the live band.

Originally the idea was actually that TRIVAN would perform as four people, but I have known Marin for a long time, he fits naturally with us as a person, and when he expressed interest in playing with TRIVAN we gave it a chance.

His role live is to create more width and fullness.

There are places where I am playing leads, melodies or solos and the arrangement naturally loses some of the guitar weight that exists on the recording. Marin fills that space and gives us a much larger atmosphere.

Sometimes his role is almost somewhere between an additional guitar and the function keyboards might have in another band. He helps preserve the layers and atmosphere that are difficult to reproduce with only one guitar while I am playing lead parts.

It is possible to perform the songs with one guitar, but with Marin the live sound can get much closer to the size and depth that I hear in my head when I write them.

8. Black metal has always been a genre capable of expressing both raw aggression and deep atmosphere. What elements of the genre are essential to TRIVAN, and where do you feel the band is pushing beyond traditional black metal?

Our roots are definitely in black metal.

The energy and especially the atmosphere are the starting point.

But almost every TRIVAN song takes that black metal foundation and seasons it with something different. One song may lean more toward death metal, another toward heavy metal, melody, atmosphere or something else entirely.

I do not want every song to be made from exactly the same ingredients.

We also move away from some of the more traditional black metal themes.

I am not particularly interested in writing endless songs where anti-religion, total destruction or worship of Satan as some supreme being is the final destination.

Those symbols mean something different inside TRIVAN.

Lucifer, Satan, the Devil, whatever name somebody wants to use, represents rebellion to me. The refusal to kneel simply because somebody demands it.

Demons are also symbolic.

One day, when everybody else has gone home and you are completely alone, your demons are often the ones still sitting there with you.

Your fears. Your weaknesses. Your memories. Your doubts.

In that sense they can become some of your most loyal companions.

So perhaps instead of spending your whole life running away from them,you should meet them, understand them and learn how to make them work for you.

Fear itself is a perfect example.

Human beings survived because they learned to listen to fear and instinct.

Fear is not automatically your enemy. It is a survival mechanism.

The problem comes when you do not understand it and it begins controlling every decision you make.

The same applies to destruction in TRIVAN.

I am interested in destruction, but not destruction as the final goal.

Sometimes you have to destroy an old version of yourself, old beliefs or old patterns in order to build something better in their place.

That is probably where TRIVAN moves furthest away from some traditional black metal thinking.

We take elements from the old foundations, but we want to build something of our own on top of them.

Musically, philosophically and visually, I do not want TRIVAN to disappear into a line of bands that all say and sound like variations of the same thing.

Black metal is our root.

It is not our cage.

9. Your upcoming single “Crowned with Dread and Power” is described as a statement of authority, discipline, and an uncompromising vision. What can you tell us about the song, and what makes it an important next step for TRIVAN?

“Crowned with Dread and Power” begins almost exactly where “Abyss of Crawling Shadows” leaves me emotionally.

Abyss reaches the point of being defiant in the abyss.

You have gone down as far as you can go and you are still standing there.

Crowned is what happens next.

I come back stronger, more aware and more prepared, but I do not come back pretending that my demons have disappeared.

They come with me.

Now they are allies.

The things that once frightened me become things I understand and can use.

And among those demons there is also one very real black demon named Baal, my Cane Corso. He has been beside me through a lot of this in the most literal sense possible.

So there is something very personal, and even slightly humorous, hidden inside all of this mythology as well.

For me, Crowned is the moment where the attitude becomes: I know what darkness looks like now. I know what fear feels like. I know my demons.

Fine.

Now let's go conquer the world together.

That does not mean everything suddenly becomes easy.

Strength is not the absence of fear.

It is knowing fear intimately and refusing to let it make your decisions.

The remaining songs of this cycle will each be different in their own way, but together they complete and explain what began with the descent.

When Eternal Shore is finally complete, I want the listener to be able to look back over the whole journey and understand why every stage needed to exist.

10. Looking beyond the current release cycle, what do you want TRIVAN to become over the next few years, both musically and philosophically?

TRIVAN began as a description of my own collapse, the point where I had to admit to myself that I had gone badly off course, and the transformation that followed.

Eternal Shore closes that particular cycle.

After that, I do not want to spend the rest of my life writing the same transformation story again and again.

There is much more I want to say.

The next album will move outward much more.

There will still be introspection because that will probably always exist in TRIVAN, but there is also going to be much more criticism, confrontation and looking at the world around us.

Musically, I already know that some of what comes next is going to be completely insane and brutal.

I cannot wait to start emptying the drawer.

I have around twenty songs already close to finished, plus more ideas constantly appearing, and sometimes I feel like I would happily record three albums immediately if time and money allowed it.

There is simply a lot inside me that I still want to say and play.

But underneath all of that, the purpose remains very simple.

TRIVAN came from my own experience of falling apart, admitting it and trying to become a better version of myself.

If somebody finds these songs while their own life is falling apart and something in them gives that person enough strength to begin their own transformation, then all of this has meaning.

They do not have to become like me.

I do not want that.

I want them to become themselves.

If TRIVAN changes even one person's life for the better and helps them find the courage to become the best version of whoever they truly are, then everything we put into this band was worth it.

TRIVAN — Black Metal from the Abyss