HollywoodChicago.com publisher Adam Fendelman conducted an interview with the popular California rock band ATREYU at the 2015 edition of the Riot Fest, which was held last month in Chicago. Fendelman speaks with ATREYU guitarist Dan Jacobs and drummer/vocalist Brandon Saller about the band’s name, the perks of being a musician, how their music has evolved over the years, how fans influence them and more. Check out the chat below.
ATREYU’s comeback album, “Long Live”, was released on September 18 through the Search And Destroy imprint as part of the newly announced joint venture between Raw Power Management and Spinefarm.
Asked why ATREYU decided to come back now after a four-year hiatus, Jacobs told Already Heard: “It just felt right! I think it was a matter of everybody being on board at the same time. We’d gotten interest from a couple of guys here and there, but not everyone, then it would go back the other way. Some people would be interested, but not the other people and it was just, like, ‘Ugh, come on, guys! Just get everybody on the same page!’ I think everything happens for a reason, though. I feel like this is the best time for us to come back. We unintentionally starved the market, which is the best thing we could’ve done. We were really burnt out — even our fanbase was burnt out because we were touring so much; we were so accessible. By starving the market and stepping back for a bit, people are kind of, like, ‘Are they gone forever? Are they ever coming back?’ Everybody wants what they can’t have, you know? So if you take something away from somebody, then they start getting all excited and talking about it, so it worked in our favor; it’s helped launch us back into the scene.”
Dan also talked about the making of “Long Live”. He said: “We were all so excited and inspired. By the time it came around to doing it, we just pumped the songs out pretty fast. Sometimes we’d write two or three songs in one sitting, doing rough demos on our phones and sending them over to Alex [Varkatzas, vocals] and he’d come up with lyrics to it. We broke the record into two halves — we went in and recorded the first half, then came up with the vocal melodies and guitar solos for the second half in the studio as we were going along. Then when we finished the first half, we went back to the second and worked on the next five or six songs. We’d never really approached it that way before, and, for us, it was better, instead of, ‘Let’s write 15 songs and try to remember them all and write them all and play them all in one go.’ Let’s just do a few at a time and really focus on these songs, give them much more attention, that way they can be the best they can be.”
Source: Blabbermouth
