Europunk.net - Interview: Atreyu

Interview with Atreyu

Posted on Nov 22, 2007 by DevotedToMusic

Atreyu are an extraordinary American band with exquisite musical talent. They have recently realesed a new album named ‘Lead Sails Paper Anchor’ through Roadrunner records and are currently on tour in Europe.

They have just finished a tour in the UK and are hoping to come back next year to play some festivals here.

I Alex McLoughlin was lucky enough to be given the opportunity to interview Dan at the London Astoria.

Hello how are you?

I’m good. How are you?

I’m very well thank you. Just a bit about working with John Feldman on the new album ‘Lead Sails Paper Anchor’. Did it help change your sound and help you progress more?

I little bit. We wanted to go for a real big sound. We wanted to have a kinda big rock, metal influenced even eighties sound. More so a lot of the records that he’s done in the past, they are really catchy more so than anything so we just wanted to make sure every song on the record just had hooks and was like…I dunno you can just listen to 1 song and get it stuck in your head. John Feldman’s really good with that.

What was the best thing about working with him?

I guess just the fact that he’s so hand on. A lot of other producers we worked with don’t really do so much. They’ll help record and stuff like we’d just come in with our record and just record it whereas with Feldman we actually sat down with acoustic guitars and went through all the songs and picked them apart then we’ll be like “Ahh this song’s good but we could make it better!” “Let’s get rid of this and put something better in.” We just made every song as best as we could make it.

I read that the album cover for ‘Lead Sails Paper Anchor’ was influenced by an observation made by a radio caller. What was it about the person’s observation that influenced the cover of the album?

I think what you might be getting at is a while ago a radio caller called in and we have a single called Lipgloss in Black on our first full length record that the quote that says live love burn die. And the first record that we have they called and said “well the first record you’ve got the butterflies kissing so that’s kinda live, the curse that’s got this girl on it and it’s kinda love and then you’ve got your third record Death Grip which is burn because it’s got this guy on the cover burning. Is the next one gonna be about death?” We were like “What?! We didn’t even plan this!” It just kinda worked like that. Strangely there was a sinking ship on our next record. A lot of it just came from one of the last songs on our record it’s called ‘Lead Sails Paper Anchor’. We just gave the artist the record and let him just take that and run with it as far as they thought the visualisation would look like.

Why did you decide to name the album ‘Lead Sails Paper Anchor’?

It was the title track of the last album and then the song itself is about touring and being away from home and most of our life consists of that and it’s just about missing things back at home and needing to push forward and do your thing.

Do you have any regrets from leaving Victory Records to join Roadrunner?

No.

Why did you leave them in the first place?

Our contract was gone. We had 3 records with them and we did all 3 and it was just time to move on. We wanted to go a major label just because they have more fire power especially over here Roadrunner have done so much amazing work with so many bands that are similar to us and we figure that would probably be the best place to go.

Some of your fans have labelled you as sell-outs ever since you decreased the amount of screaming in your records. What do you say about this?

Progression’s a b**ch I’m sorry.

Why did you decide to change your music style?

With every record we put out we wanna out something bigger and better then put out previous to that and it just seemed like after Death Grip we just needed to make a drastic change. We needed to do something that was just gonna shock people because every record we put out we’ve been called sell-outs and we’ve put out The Curse and that’s probably one of our most popular records and everyone told us we were sell-outs because we were singing more on it. With this record in particular it was like Lets make the biggest record we could possibly make. Let’s not hold back on anything. Let’s just do whatever comes to mind and not be like alright we we’ve gotta fit in these guidelines of scream this, sing this and do this it was just like who cares about the rules!? F**k the rules! We’ve gonna do whatever we want and it turned out pretty awesome. I’m really happy with it.

Have you got anything unexpected lined up for the show tonight as it’s the last one of this tour?

Ahh well it’s the last one in the UK and then we go to Europe. We’ve got some treats that we do on every show and stuff like that. I do my guitar solo that I toss in there towards the end to change it up a bit and bring back the old school feeling.

Interview with Atreyu

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