Sometimes bands need to catch a break and Californian metalcore quintet, Atreyu did exactly that four years ago. Since their reunion last year, the band have had great things come by them with a new LP, Long Live releasing this Friday, as well as gracing the stages of this year’s Soundwave Festival. Before the band’s new release, we had the opportunity to chat with lead and rhythm guitarist, Dan Jacobs on the upcoming release, Atreyu’s hiatus and his opinion on the current metalcore scene.
Since coming back as a band, how has everything been so far for you guys?
It’s been awesome so far. I mean, when you take four years off it’s kinda hard to know what to expect when you come back but everything’s been great. We’ve been getting a great response from all of our shows – luckily all over the world so we wanna see more and keep the party going.
Yeah for sure. I saw you guys this year at your Soundwave sideshow and you all had so much energy on stage and it was really impressive to see that. How have the tours been so far? Has it been easy for you guys to pick up from where you left off?
When you start any tour, especially if you haven’t been touring a lot – maybe you just came off from our situation, hiatus or writing an album or you haven’t played for a few months, there’s always that kind of first show or two where you’re kinda getting your bearings – just feeling out of rhythm and how everybody else is moving across the stage so you don’t run into each other and then after a few shows, you get into that groove and you’re good – everyone’s rocking and rolling.
Obviously everything is rusty and you’re still getting into it. Once you get the rhythm of things, it flows really nicely as well. How did the decision of going on hiatus come about?
It was something we were all just feeling, you know, at the same time, before we even brought it out – everybody was just feeling burnt out. We’ve been touring so much and we just felt a bit lost. I think we all went down different paths that we didn’t necessarily know whether or not it was the right or wrong path. We all just felt like we were stuck in Neverland and all we ever did was graduate high school and soon after going on the road, we just sort of grew up in the band.
I think everybody wanted to see what they were made of outside of the band and just who we were as individuals and not just the guys from Atreyu. I think a combined effort of so many things brought us to the point where we weren’t having fun and none of us were where we wanted to truly be. We didn’t want to break up or anything but we definitely needed to like go down different roads for a little bit and to become the people we’ve been held back from growing into so in that way, we could come back together stronger, passionate and excited again.
That’s awesome to hear. Especially when you’re feeling burnt out, you obviously want to take a break from all that stuff. I know you guys focused on different projects and also certain aspects of your life. Did you feel like that break provided you an opportunity to refresh yourselves creatively?
Absolutely. I mean, when you get to a point where we were at before our hiatus, we were just squeezing songs out ’cause we felt like we had to and not cause we wanted to; that really takes toll on the writing process and it’s really hard to get into something that your mind is not in at the time.
If you go too long without something you really love and then when you find out there’s a chance you can have it again, you just get really excited about that reconnection with it. In this case, we’ve all been really, really excited and had a lot of built-up inspiration in which we finally had a chance to get out on this album. I mean, from our live shows you kind of see and feel how excited we are and how stoked we are to be writing songs again.
Did the decision of going on hiatus come easily?
At the time, no. It’s was hard in a sense that we didn’t really know what the next step was gonna be or how long this hiatus would be – it was kind of taking a plunge into the unknown. Aside from that, because of how negatively we all felt about the whole situation – the last thing we wanted was the fans or the traveling or anything. All we wanted was to see how green the grass was on the other side and not to be ‘just the guys from Atreyu’ for a bit. It was getting overwhelming at times and I think for that reason, it wasn’t a difficult choice to leave it behind. Otherwise, being in a band is something that we love and overtime, you start to think about what you’re doing now and it’s cool and all but not as cool as being on stage, halfway around the world and performing in front of people; it’s still the best.
Another thing that must be pretty cool is that in a few weeks you guys are releasing your new record, Long Live. What are your overall feelings about this record?
For me, it’s really exciting. It is the first thing that we’re putting out in such a long time. When you take that much time off from anything, to come back to it again, it’s like coming back again into the unknown. Until we got into it, we realised how much of a great record it was to make. It’s got everything could ever you want in it – it’s what any Atreyu fan could really want from a record. I listen to everything that has been going on within and around our genre over the past four or five years and what piece of the puzzle we are. It’s interesting how relevant we are as a band yet still sound so different than everybody else, which is awesome. I’d love to just see how we mix in with everything and stir things up.
Have you noticed there’s a lot of metalcore bands in this scene right now that all sound similar to one another? What’s your opinion on the whole metalcore scene at the moment?
Unfortunately it’s become very cookie-cutter and I feel like all the bands kinda sound the same. They all dress the same, they have the same haircut, same clothes, the same stage moves, the same head-bobbing, the same breakdowns, all the singers sound like whiny little boys, all the guys have all the deep, growl screams and the really high screams – and that’s what pretty much everybody is. There’s like no big guitar solos anymore; there’s like a couple of bands that do it – it’s like nobody can play their instruments anymore – it’s gotten weird. It’s like idiocy but with music.
Do you think metalcore bands are just taking comfort on following a specific formula when it comes to making music (breakdowns, clean vocals etc)
Yeah. I feel that people are getting lazy and I don’t think most of them understand the value of being original. There are bands who are original and they are the ones that stay around forever because there’s nothing like them – it’s interesting, it stands out, you know. If you have a copy of something, it’s never as good as the original. I mean if you have a copy of a copy of a copy. We played a few shows recently where if you turn your back to the stage and then you sit there and listen all day long, you’d think that you’re listening to the same band, playing the same song, all day long and it’s like – what’s going on?! It’s just strange, like if I see one more wall of death, I’m gonna go crazy, is this it right now? Everybody doing the same thing?! It’s like everybody wants to eat chocolate chip ice cream all fucking day long and nothing else.
While making this comeback album of yours, did you guys feel any pressure while you were making the record?
I feel like the only time we’ve only felt pressured was because of our label or just the pressure of getting those singles as a radio hit. Our approach to sound is ‘fuck the radio hit, fuck all that shit.’ We just made sure that making it was a comfortable process for us instead of going all experimental. We’ve spent five albums experimenting each time and doing something different and we finally came to the point where we realised that we didn’t need to experiment anymore. I guess you can see that by how much bigger the album sounds and how much energy and passion is in it.
Was there any particular story behind why the title of the record was named Long Live?
The origin of the title started with our manager, Stuart Gili-Ross who is also the bass player for the band Gallows. One day when we first started working with all of our management and we were doing some stuff for some practice not far from when we reuinited, he just went, “Guys, put something together. Maybe we’ll do this, this and this. Long live, Atreyu” – something along those lines. When we put it altogether, we were in there and considered how cool the title was so we started having merch that had ‘Long Live Atreyu’ on it. When the time came naming the album as well as the title track, ‘Long Live’ just seemed like the most appropriate thing. Like we were already kind of pushing it without even realising we were, you know. It was perfect how the name was sitting right in front of us.
What would you say has been the most rewarding aspect since making this comeback album?
Just getting to play with my friends again, you know, especially with Brandon [Saller, drums] and Alex[Varkatzas, vocals] – these are dudes I’ve been with since junior high school and I’ve known them since I was thirteen years old. These are dudes I’ve grown up with and I’ve done nothing but play music with these guys so just getting the chance to do that again is awesome in itself.
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Long Live will be released this Friday (September 18th)
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