Built to Fall Metalcore Fill Sequence — Nick Augusto (Trivium) Drum Lick | MetalForge
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Learn the Built to Fall Metalcore Fill Sequence drum lick by Nick Augusto of Trivium. From Built to Fall (In Waves (2011)). "Built to Fall" from Trivium's *In Waves* (2011) features some of the most compositionally deliberat...
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1. Nick Augusto's Signature Licks — "Built to Fall" from Trivium's *In Waves* (2011) features some of the most compositionally deliberate fill work on the album, and it is the track that most clearly demonstrates Nick Augusto's fill construction philosophy. Where many metalcore drummers treat fills as interruptions — moments where the groove stops and the drummer displays technique — Augusto's fills on "Built to Fall" function as rhythmic punctuation that accelerates the song's structural energy toward section changes without breaking the listener's sense of momentum. The track operates at approximately 170 BPM, a tempo that is fast enough to make complex fills technically demanding but controlled enough that Augusto has room to be musical about their placement. His fill sequences on "Built to Fall" are characterised by their economic construction: rather than lengthy, maximally complex passages that show off every technique simultaneously, Augusto deploys shorter, targeted fills of two to four beats that arrive at harmonically precise moments — almost always on the last beat of a phrase before a riff change — and resolve cleanly onto the downbeat of the following section. This compositional discipline is not accidental. Augusto's approach reflects the influence of Chris Adler and Joey Jordison, both of whom he has cited as influential drummers and both of whom share the same fill philosophy: the fill should make the next part feel inevitable and earned rather than surprising and disruptive. The fills themselves combine downward tom cascades (a classic metal fill shape) with kick displacement — placing kick notes between the hand movements rather than under them — which gives the fills a layered, three-dimensional quality that distinguishes them from simple tom runs. The crash accent landing on the downbeat following each fill is consistently placed with full weight, creating a satisfying rhythmic arrival that signals to the listener that a structural boundary has been crossed. For drummers, "Built to Fall" is an ideal fill-vocabulary study because it presents Augusto's technique in its most compositionally purposeful context. Learning to play his fills correctly requires understanding not just the physical execution but the metric placement — practising each fill as a phrase that ends somewhere rather than a pattern that repeats indefinitely.2. Nick Augusto Profile — Construct fills as two-to-four-beat phrases that resolve onto a downbeat crash — this gives each fill a clear destination Combine downward tom cascades with kick displacement so the fill has three-dimensional layering rather than a flat hand-only run Place fills at the last beat of a phrase before a riff change — the harmonic context makes the arrival feel inevitable Hit the crash accent landing with full arm weight so the downbeat registers as a clear structural arrival, not just another beat Practise each fill in its full phrase context — preceding groove plus fill plus landing — rather than isolating the fill alone
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