Trivium recently wrapped up their tour with Hatebreed, Lamb Of God, and Megadeth without having missed a single show due to COVID (minus the Canadian date since they weren't allowed in). Trivium vocalist and guitarist Matt Heafy explained to Lou Brutus of HardDrive Radio that getting vaccinated and being safe on the tour was the only way forward. Heafy compares getting the COVID vaccine to getting vaccinated for anything else, especially when touring South America.
"My entire band and entire crew were vaccinated," said Heafy "I had breakthrough COVID as well, so I was about as immune as you can possibly get and I was still adhering to every single rule. And I know that maybe some people, unfortunately, are rolling their eyes when they hear about this stuff, but the way I think about it, I don't think anything other than this is a virus; it's a sickness. I've had tons of freakin' shots. Every time you go to South America, you have to get boosters and immunity, if you're gonna be near the jungle.
"My kids are almost three. When they were little, they got polio and smallpox and measles vaccinations, hepatitis vaccinations. That's the only way I thought of this: 'You know what? I wanna play shows, and I'm gonna do everything I can to make sure not one person misses our set for one freakin' show.' So, we had the vaccine, still wore masks everywhere except for dressing room, stage and bus. You know how much I love food. We made sure every single meal we had on every single day off was outdoors — outdoors, no friends. 'Cause we wanted the shows to happen.
"With how strict we ran it, if anyone is ever curious, like, 'Man, that's a little bit too much,' the proof is in the pudding. We came out of this thing without one show missed. Canada, obviously, is getting postponed, it's getting moved — it's not canceled. That's a different border, country-to-country thing, so that has nothing to do with us. And we're freakin' stoked. It was amazing. Five to ten thousand people a night. For metal, that's insane — that's an insane amount of people to show up for Hatebreed, Trivium, Lamb Of God, and Megadeth. So it was amazing. We had some of the best shows we've ever had in our career on this run."
To date, at least 220.6 million people in the United States have received one dose of the available vaccines.
