Metal giants Trivium return to Scotland this week, and they’ve got a special pre-gig ritual – making sure they have some haggis.

Singer Matt Heafy is a huge food fan and loves trying local dishes in whatever country they’re in.

And as the group turn the page on 2015 album Silence In The Snow with a gig at the Barrowland, he’s preparing for a familiar ritual…

“We always love getting some traditional Scottish food,” he says.

“I love haggis, neeps and tatties and we’ve had some great dishes from the Butterfly and Pig in the past. Every single time we go to Glasgow we try and walk around and just get a feel for the city because it’s a beautiful place. We’ve got some of the most amazing fans there and it’s always one of the craziest shows on the tour.

“I remember seeing Slipknot at Download in 2006, I think, and Corey Taylor (Slipknot’s singer) was listing off a few cities to me afterwards that had the greatest fans, and Glasgow was one he mentioned. That’s been true for us as well.”

The Florida band released Silence In The Snow two years ago, and it has proved to be one of their most successful releases at home in the USA. However the record also featured a different side to the band with Matt, who was recovering from throat problems, not screaming at all on the album and singing instead.

That led some fans to wonder if the group were set to permanently adopt that style.

“If the songs on Silence had needed screaming we said we’d do it, but when we did the clean vocals, we thought the songs didn’t need the screaming,” explains the singer.

“With The Crusade (their 2006 album) it had been 95% clean singing, so we thought we’d do one that was 100% clean. Since going back and recovering, I’ve been doing an hour at home every day of vocal warm-ups. It’s to get my stamina up, and the screaming now feels more easy, and sounds more brutal than ever.

“A big part of Trivium’s sound is the screaming and we’ve not been running away from it, it’s just vocally we’ve been experimenting and seeing what else we can do. After seven very different records we can see what the best things we’ve done are, and feel like we can do anything. On the next record I could sing, scream, anything, it’s all there for us.”

When that next record will arrive remains to be seen, with Matt saying that the four piece are simply throwing some riffs together with no set timetable. Instead they have most recently looked to the past, with a re-issue of their debut album, Ember To Inferno, being released at the end of 2016.

Going back to their early songs and teenage years brought a few surprises for the 31-year-old.

“It’s been really eye-opening,” he says.

“I used to lump Inferno in as Ascendancy (their second record) Junior, but going back through it for the re-mastering it showed me that it’s actually very different. Looking at them I can recall how we wrote music, and we didn’t have fans, or worry if people would like this. We just made the kind of music we wanted to make.”

Since then the band have zipped through several records, and also an increasing number of drummers. Alex Bent was recently announced as the newest incumbent of the drum stool, following on from Paul Wandtke.

“It is getting a bit Spinal Tap with Trivium and drummers,” admits the singer, wryly.

“We don’t do it because we enjoy doing that – it’s hard work teaching a drummer seven albums worth of material!”

The singer has also been involved with speaking to the You Rock foundation, which deals with mental health issues, while the group’s songs often deal with topics like war, depression and racism. Matt believes music is an important outlet for such feelings.

“With music I’ve been really lucky that I can write about these things, so something like Departure is a song about thoughts of suicide, which is what was going through my head at that time,” he says.

“Crusade had songs about homophobia and racism, and it’s important to have that more than ever, and show that this macho attitude people seem to have just now isn’t the right way to go about it.

“I see bands writing just pointless music these days, and more than ever we need bands to write about something.”

Trivium, Barrowland, Thursday, £20, 7pm

JONATHAN GEDDES