If your name is Heafy, metal could be your destiny. That was the case with Matt Heafy, whose band Trivium broke through in 2005 with the presciently titled album Ascendancy. Skilled enough in their double-guitar attack to woo the Kerrang! heartland, but respectful of their juddering forebears, the fresh-faced, long-haired Floridians were adopted as metal's lucky mascots.

In the years since, the hair has got shorter – only guitarist Corey Beaulieu still has enough to whip around – as the list of viable touring territories has grown. Trivium's current European jaunt also features a swollen undercard of three support acts, giving it the laudable feel of an apprenticeship scheme in applied fret-melting.

Despite taking a mini-Download festival on the road, Trivium remain unmistakable headliners. It helps that Heafy has a truly infernal voice, able to handle both the guttural bark that has become cultural shorthand for thrash, and the soaring bursts of modal melody that can make it so irresistible.

The mini-suite Into the Mouth of Hell We'll March, tooled from lickety-split guitar solos and three different choruses, transforms the sold-out ballroom into a spirited mosh pit. The equally dense Entrance of the Conflagration sees the crowd spin out into a huge human whirlpool. Luckily, Heafy is as stentorian in his safety instructions as he is when singing about absolution at the sight of your demise. "If anyone falls, you pick them back up," he bellows, and the churn begins to look more like a good-natured flash mob.

Nothing else in Trivium's 80-minute set can quite match this spontaneous audience response, although the cataclysmic Pull Harder on the Strings of Your Martyr comes close. The band seem genuinely thrilled with their reception. "I remember Slipknot telling us how crazy you guys were," says Heafy during a rare lull. In the annals of metal, there are few higher compliments.

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