ATREYU Trivia — 40 Entries
40 sourced facts about ATREYU.
Trivia
Their first visit to Japan came in 2004, taking in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, with the Nagoya date closing the run. During the trip they sat for a joint interview alongside Unearth, in which they hinted at having something planned for the final night.
The starting point was a punk band Alex Varkatzas, Dan Jacobs and Brandon Saller had together in high school. Several years and a number of personnel changes separated that band from the one that would carry the Atreyu name — the shape was arrived at gradually, with three of the teenagers still in place at the end of it.
The band went into a self-imposed hiatus in 2011 and did not play again until 14 September 2014, when they took the main stage at the Aftershock festival in Sacramento, California — close to four years later. The return coincided with the tenth anniversary of The Curse.
On 30 September 2020 the band and vocalist Alex Varkatzas parted ways, ending a tenure of twenty years. The announcement went out in both parties' names and was worded to preserve mutual respect.
Varkatzas's departure moved three people at once. Brandon Saller, until then the drummer and clean vocalist, stepped to the front; bassist Porter McKnight took over the screamed vocals; and Kyle Rosa, from Saller's other band Hell or Highwater, filled the vacant drum stool. McKnight had already covered screams once before, when Varkatzas was injured, and that stand-in role simply became permanent. The new configuration was first heard on "Save Us" in October 2020.
In 2025 the band re-recorded The Curse from end to end, for three reasons: to make the recording match what audiences now hear live, to take advantage of two decades of technical progress, and to own the masters. The rights to the original sit with Concord, which bought Victory Records in 2019, so re-recording was the only route available. The new version is self-released and is the first recording in the band's career that they own outright.
For the writing of The End Is Not The End the band imposed a rule on themselves: while the record was being made, nothing less than ten years old could be listened to. It sent them back to early touchstones such as Hatebreed, Soilwork and In Flames, and to the local hardcore bands they had grown up on. Saller put the purpose plainly — to keep the present day out of the room.
The Japanese edition of The Curse carried a Bon Jovi cover as a bonus track. The band described it as something done for fun, while noting that the lyrics themselves are darker than the song's reputation suggests. The cover also figured in what they had planned for the 2004 Japanese shows.
Atreyu pulled out of Rockstar Taste of Chaos, scheduled for 10-12 November 2008 at Shinkiba Studio Coast in Tokyo. An Asian promoter had gone bankrupt, collapsing the shows the band had booked between their UK and Japanese dates to pay for the trip. They said at the time that they were fond of Japan and intended to return.
The video for "Lonely", released in 2010, was shot in Japan while the band were there for Taste of Chaos. It is built from off-stage footage — the band in a game arcade, and exchanges with Japanese office workers they did not know.
In September 2019 the band came to Japan for Across the Future 2019: Shinkiba Studio Coast in Tokyo on the 23rd, Namba Hatch in Osaka on the 25th and Zepp Nagoya on the 26th. Material from the deluxe edition of In Our Wake was in the sets around that run.
The Japanese edition of The Beautiful Dark of Life was released on 10 January 2024 through Big Nothing / Ultra-Vybe, catalogue number SPINE800031PJ.
According to the biography published by their Japanese label, Atreyu have shared stages with Slipknot, Linkin Park, Chris Cornell and Avenged Sevenfold. The same page places them in Southern California, records the hiatus that followed their 2009 album, and dates their return to touring to 2015.
Atreyu came up in Orange County, Southern California, in the same window that Avenged Sevenfold, Thrice, Bleeding Through and Eighteen Visions were drawing attention from the same few square miles. The Offspring, No Doubt and Social Distortion had come from there before them. Speaking in 2008, Varkatzas put the region's bands' shared excess down to something particular in the place itself.
The Curse took five months of writing and a month of recording. Their debut, Suicide Notes and Butterfly Kisses, had been written in roughly a month and put on tape in two weeks — a gap the band framed as simply having been given the room to work the second time.
The Curse entered the Billboard 200 at number 32 — an independent-label release, and the record that first put the band on a national footing.
The Curse went on to sell more than 450,000 copies, a figure well outside the norm for mid-2000s metalcore, and the point at which the band's name began to travel internationally.
In 2004 the band played Ozzfest, immediately after The Curse had come out — the summer run that carried their name across North America.
Asked what made them want to play music, the band named AFI, Alkaline Trio, Hot Water Music, In Flames, Killswitch Engage and Hatebreed. Punk, hardcore and melodic death metal sitting in one list goes a long way towards explaining how their early sound was assembled.
2006's A Death-Grip on Yesterday reached the top ten of the Billboard 200, converting the momentum built by The Curse into a chart position.
2007's Lead Sails Paper Anchor also landed in the Billboard 200's top ten and went on to be certified gold by the RIAA — a certification that had already become uncommon for rock bands by that point in the century.
As of 2024 two Atreyu albums carry gold certification, and their top-ten placings on the Billboard 200 are not limited to a single record.
Producer John Feldmann first worked with the band on 2007's Lead Sails Paper Anchor. He was brought back for In Our Wake in 2018 and again for Baptize in 2021, making him the longest-running outside collaborator in the band's career.
Long Live, released in 2015 on the other side of the hiatus, reached the top thirty of the Billboard 200 — the chart result for a comeback record that followed nearly four years of silence.
In Our Wake was made in two blocks, split around Brandon Saller's touring commitments with his other band Hell or Highwater. The sessions ran at John Feldmann's Los Angeles studio, and every song bar two was written there rather than brought in — the band splitting into groups and generating two ideas a day.
"Super Hero", the closing track on In Our Wake, features M. Shadows of Avenged Sevenfold and Aaron Gillespie of Underoath. The band described its subject as parenthood — the time and effort it takes to keep being a real-life hero to your children. In 2020 they dedicated it to first responders and healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2020 the band staged two livestreams under the title Carry the Fire. The 20 November show drew across their catalogue; the 4 December one played Lead Sails Paper Anchor in full. Both came shortly after the announcement of Varkatzas's departure.
Baptize, released on 4 June 2021 through Spinefarm, was the first full-length with Saller fronting the band. Three guests appear: Travis Barker on "Warrior", Papa Roach's Jacoby Shaddix on "Untouchable" and Trivium's Matt Heafy on "Oblivion". John Feldmann produced.
Kyle Rosa had already sat in on drums for Saller once, in 2019, before he joined. When Saller moved to the front the following year, the seat Rosa had covered became his permanently.
The band's ninth album, The Beautiful Dark of Life, was not conceived as one record. Three EPs were issued across 2023 and then combined with further new material into a fifteen-track album. The EPs were designed as stages in a narrative; one of them, The Moment You Find Your Flame, came out on 18 August 2023 and was described by the band as dealing with the difficulty of recognising one's own worth, with self-doubt and insecurity.
On 18 October 2024, for the twentieth anniversary of The Curse, the band played the album in full at the House of Blues in Anaheim, California. Eighteen Visions and Death by Stereo shared the bill — Eighteen Visions performing their own twenty-year-old Obsession complete, and Death by Stereo marking twenty-five years since their 1999 debut.
The autumn of 2025 brought a European run billed as The Curse - 20+1 Years Anniversary Tour — the twentieth anniversary with a year added on. It took in the UK, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Belgium, playing The Curse complete at every stop.
The Pronoia Sessions, from 2024, is not a set of new songs but eight of their own reworked and two covers alongside them: Audioslave's "Like a Stone" and "Mary Jane's Last Dance" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. It went to streaming on 25 October and to CD and vinyl on 8 November, through Spinefarm.
Dan Jacobs gave two reasons for reaching for Audioslave's "Like a Stone": Chris Cornell and that band had meant a great deal to Atreyu over the years, and Brandon Saller's voice had long drawn comparisons to Cornell's. What settled it was that almost nobody had attempted the song.
2025 took them from the Curse anniversary tour to a Louder Than Life appearance, a European run, their first headline tour of South America and their first shows in Australia — the Australian dates selling out before the run began.
"Dead", released on 17 September 2025, turns on a pair of questions: do I matter, and would anyone notice if I were gone. Saller framed it as the doubt underneath the wish to leave something lasting behind. Matthew Pauling recorded it.
"Children of Light", the tenth track on The End Is Not The End, features Max Cavalera of Soulfly and Cavalera Conspiracy. The band built it as a festival song with a primal streak to it, and named early Sepultura as the direct influence.
The End Is Not The End, their tenth album, came out on 24 April 2026 through Spinefarm. Matt Pauling produced it, taking over from their long-standing collaborator John Feldmann.
As of 2026 the band is a five-piece: Brandon Saller on lead vocals, Dan Jacobs and Travis Miguel on guitars, Porter McKnight on bass and vocals, and Kyle Rosa on drums. Jacobs and Miguel are long-standing members, and this configuration has held since the 2020 reshuffle.
After leaving, Alex Varkatzas started a new band, Dead Icarus, with Gabe Mangold of Enterprise Earth on guitar and production and Brandon Zackey on drums. Their debut album Zealot was released on 31 October 2024 by MNRK Heavy.