It was released worldwide during August 2011 through Roadrunner Records and was produced by Colin Richardson and Martyn "Ginge" Ford.

On June 26, Paolo told his Twitter followers to tweet to Roadrunner Records to release the song "Dusk Dismantled".

On July 9, Trivium played "Inception of the End" live for the first time at the Rockstar Mayhem Festival in San Bernardino, CA.

On their 2011 run on the Mayhem Festival tour, Matt Heafy stated that "Built to Fall" would be their first radio single, and the live debut of "Caustic Are the Ties That Bind" was played in San Francisco supporting Dream Theater.

[9] Nick Augusto's drum work features blast beats in tracks "Inception of the End", "Forsake Not the Dream", "Chaos Reigns" and "Shattering the Skies Above".

Eduardo Rivadavia of AllMusic rated the album four out of five stars and commented, "...Trivium will probably be vilified once again for taking the same sort of creative backward step that the fans typically clamor for from Metallica, Slayer, and other bands on down; it's the essence of the Florida band's "can't win" lot in life, but there's always hope that this will change, in time".

"[19] Revolver rated the album three out of five stars and summarized, "An inconsistent record with flashes of brilliance, In Waves should, however, keep diehard Trivium fans happy.

"[20] Despite mostly positive reception, the album was poorly received by Jamie Thomson from The Guardian, who, in his review, stated that, "In Waves is as overproduced and mercilessly polished as modern metal gets, and all the worse for it.