TRIVAN: Discipline After Collapse
Updated: Sep 30
TRIVAN, the independent black metal band from Zagreb, Croatia, is turning a founder's personal loss into its most confident single yet — and building its debut album, Eternal Shore, one song at a time, in full view of its audience.
The Abyss, Revisited
TRIVAN's new single, "Crowned with Dread and Power," began as an unfinished idea. Guitarist, composer, and founder Vanja Šantak had circled a song called "Abyss of Crawling Shadows" for years, trying to write convincingly about depression through a friend's experience of it. He couldn't finish it — he didn't have the material inside himself yet.
Then his dog Amon, who had been with him for almost thirteen years, died.
"I no longer had to imagine that abyss," Šantak says. "I fell into it myself. Grief, depression, helplessness and loss became real." What pulled him back out was a single thought: Amon would never have wanted to see him curled up and destroyed over it. That thought is where "Crowned with Dread and Power" starts. "It is not about the darkness disappearing," he explains. "It is about standing up again inside that same darkness. And the 'crown' has nothing to do with domination over other people. It is authority over yourself." Pain, fear, and weakness don't vanish — they just stop being in charge. As Šantak puts it: "It is discipline after collapse."
That sentence could serve as TRIVAN's mission statement. It's the engine behind the philosophy the band calls Trivanism — explicitly not a religion or a cult, but an artistic and philosophical framework built around introspection, personal truth, resistance to blind obedience, and transformation. The idea, stripped to its core: darkness can be where self-awareness begins. Pain becomes fuel. Discipline becomes freedom. The only vow that matters is the one made to your own truth.
The band's name distills that same idea into a single word. TRIVAN combines "triviality" and "vanquish" — a compact statement of intent to defeat the trivial things that can consume a life.
From School Friends to a Band That Finally Clicked
TRIVAN was founded in Zagreb in 2018 by Šantak and bassist Ivan Bertović, along with a mutual school friend on drums. The COVID-19 pandemic interrupted the band's early momentum almost immediately — and, in the strange way these things sometimes go, that disruption became a turning point rather than a dead end, reshaping the project's direction and giving it the identity it carries now.
The lineup that eventually formed reads like a map of Zagreb's underground scene finally converging. Tomislav Žiljak, formerly of black metal act Darkendome, joined as vocalist. When the original drummer stepped away, Robert Vlašić — also ex-Darkendome — came in behind the kit, bringing what the band describes as renewed stability and force. Rhythm guitarist Marin Buljan completed the current lineup in 2025.
What's striking is how long these connections already existed before the band did. Šantak and Bertović go back to university, where they played in another band together. Šantak has known Žiljak since high school. Žiljak and Vlašić had already played together in Darkendome. And Buljan is simply Šantak's neighbor of more than eleven years — a relationship old enough that Šantak once sold him a guitar, long before either of them thought about starting a band together.
"The funny thing is that we all knew each other for years, we all played with different people and tried different projects, but somehow it never lined up so that all of us were in the same band," Šantak says. "Then I guess the universe finally decided to interfere." TRIVAN was originally conceived as a four-piece with a single guitar; when Buljan expressed interest in joining, the band saw no reason to protect a blueprint just because it was the original plan. His second guitar, Šantak notes, matters most live — thickening the sound and giving the recorded riffs the width they need on a stage.
Current lineup
Vanja Šantak — lead guitar, music, lyrics, founder Ivan Bertović — bass, co-founder Robert Vlašić — drums, formerly Darkendome Tomislav Žiljak — vocals, formerly Darkendome Marin Buljan — rhythm guitar, joined 2025
A Black Metal Band That Never Stopped Loving a Good Riff
Šantak's musical education started early and close to home — his uncle played in a rock band, so instruments and rehearsals were just part of the environment growing up. Alice Cooper's Trash was one of the first records that mattered to him, followed by Iron Maiden and Judas Priest before he went deeper into heavy metal generally. Marduk, Cradle of Filth, Satyricon, and Immortal came later, pulling him toward the genre TRIVAN now calls home.
But the classic metal riff never left him, and it's audible in the band's sound. "Black metal gave me the space for atmosphere, darkness, symbolism and the feeling that a song can open a completely different inner space," Šantak says. "But at the same time I want the guitar to have weight and character. So I am not trying to make a perfect copy of a particular black metal scene from a particular year." The goal isn't checking boxes against genre orthodoxy — it's building something recognizable as TRIVAN even with the name stripped away.
That same instinct extends to the band's visual identity, which has stayed unusually consistent across a run of singles — "Dark Malicious Desire," "Blackened Heart's Pledge," "Dance of Death," and "Abyss of Crawling Shadows." The artwork comes from Saša Brnić, known as Arts of the Unspeakable, and the collaboration doesn't start once a song is finished. Brnić is brought in early, while a track is still developing, so the image and the music mature together rather than one simply illustrating the other. "I would love for someone to see the image without any text at all and already feel part of what the song is about," Šantak says. "Then, when they hear the music and read the lyrics, everything connects."
Building an Album in Public
TRIVAN's debut full-length, Eternal Shore, is targeted for late February 2027, and the band is currently deep in recording. The rollout strategy is deliberately unconventional: every song on the record is also being released as its own standalone single, one at a time, rather than held back for a single surprise drop.
"Crowned with Dread and Power" is the fifth song in that sequence. Track seven, due around Christmas, is not a seasonal gift — Šantak describes it as "a very brutal criticism of what Christmas often represents or becomes," the contradictions and hypocrisy under the lights and cookies, and he's openly amused by the timing. "It is one big slap in the face," he says. "That is exactly why releasing it around Christmas makes me like the idea even more." The eighth and final song closes out the album and the single cycle together in February.
"I do not want us to disappear for ten months, stay completely silent and then suddenly come back with an album," Šantak explains. "I want the people who follow TRIVAN to actually be able to follow how the album develops and comes to life. They can go through every new chapter together with us."
Release schedule:
Crowned with Dread and Power (5th single) — Bandcamp now, wide release Sep 25, 2026, built from Vanja's grief over his dog Amon's death.
6th song — around Nov 1, 2026.
7th song — around Christmas 2026, an anti-Christmas critique.
8th song (final) — February 2027, closes Eternal Shore as a complete story.
Once the record is finished, the band's focus shifts entirely: from March 2027 onward, TRIVAN moves into serious rehearsal and live preparation, working to translate the recordings' power into a stage show with real force behind it — not, as Šantak puts it, a performance where the goal is simply managing to play the songs.
Independent by Choice, With an Eye on the Road
TRIVAN remains fully self-released and unsigned. The band's association with Bloodrite Covenant Records — which also promotes NYC thrash metal band Another Demon, and runs Tour de Thrash and TDT Radio — is a friendship rather than a contract. "They have no rights to our music, there is no exclusivity and there is no contractual obligation," Šantak clarifies. "Everything that belongs to TRIVAN remains ours." He calls it a genuine underground story: people supporting a band because they believe in it, not because a deal requires them to.
That independence hasn't dulled the band's ambition for where they might eventually play. Šantak has an openly stated goal of getting TRIVAN onto the bill at Tennessee Metal Devastation Music Fest, a wish sparked by watching a documentary about the festival and drawn to its unpolished, genuinely-in-it energy rather than any spectacle. He's equally drawn to the prospect of Kilkim Zaibu, calling it a festival where the band "could make sense both stylistically and energetically." Neither is booked, and Šantak is careful not to overstate where things stand — but the intent is real. "If it is realistic for TRIVAN to be there in 2027, great," he says. "If not, then I would really like us to be organized and ready enough to seriously try for 2028."
For now, the singles keep arriving, the abyss keeps producing material, and Eternal Shore keeps taking shape a chapter at a time — in front of, rather than hidden from, the people listening.
Home Turf: Beer, Basements, and Zagreb's Stages
Ask a Croatian metal band about local breweries and you might expect a collaboration already in motion. Not so, at least not yet. Šantak is candid that TRIVAN has no official relationship with PriMarius, Nova Runda, or any other Croatian brewery — though he allows that in a city like Zagreb, those lines blur easily. "It is entirely possible that I know someone who works at one of them without realizing it — through friends, people I know casually, or even people I regularly meet at the dog park," he says, "but I honestly could not claim any real connection at this point." A TRIVAN beer had never seriously come up before this conversation, either. But asking the question seems to have done some damage: "Now that you have asked, however, I have to admit that it sounds like an absolutely fantastic idea," Šantak says. "You may have just planted a dangerous seed in my head."
The band's ties to Zagreb's venues are less speculative. TRIVAN's members are fixtures at the city's metal shows, turning up regularly at places like Vintage Industrial Bar, Boogaloo, and Močvara. "At this point we have probably attended enough shows to qualify as part of the furniture," Šantak says. Asked where TRIVAN would most want to play in Zagreb, his answer is unadorned: everywhere. "Clubs, festivals, basements — baptisms, weddings, children's birthday parties and funerals if necessary," he jokes, before making the real point — the band isn't waiting around for a stage prestigious enough to deserve them. Once Eternal Shore is finished and rehearsed, TRIVAN intends to simply start playing, wherever the opportunity is genuine. "If somebody gives TRIVAN an honest opportunity to get on a stage and play our music, it will be both an honor and something we genuinely want to do."
Sources: TRIVAN Interview (provided by the artist, September 2026); TRIVAN Electronic Press Kit, official information compiled from trivanofficial.com, updated September 21, 2026.
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