Latest album: The Beautiful Dark of Life
Label: Spinefarm
American metalcore band, Atreyu, are in town, with their We Want Your Skulls tour. Given they have been kicking around internationally for the better part of two and a half decades, they are well experienced with creating bone rattling music on the live front. Their diverse sound has given them the added advantage of joining whichever tour suits them, but on this occasion, they are back in Australia, headlining again, after last being here in 2020, just before the world imploded due to the pandemic. Since then, they have released two well received albums, in Baptize and their ninth studio release, The Beautiful Dark of Life, the latter of which was weaned to fans with successive EP releases. In light of their tour here, Hot Metal caught up with the ever-personable lead, and co-guitarist, and backing vocalist, Dan Jacobs.
Hot Metal: It’s only been three years since Atreyu visited to Australia. Glad to see your return.
Dan Jacobs: Yeah, the last time was right before Covid in 2020, and we got out just before the whole thing hit. We almost got stuck in Australia, actually.
HM: I gather it was odd to then release an album [Baptize] during the pandemic, and to not be able to tour on the back of it?
DJ: Yeah, it was very strange. I mean, we did a livestream which is not the same as a real show, you know, it is very awkward trying to put on a show to virtually no one, when you’re doing it, there are maybe seven people in the room, a bit of distance from you, just manning the cameras.
HM: What can we expect from the set list this time? I believe that in 2019 you did a fan request set list of 20 songs.
DJ: Yeah, this time we are trying to get as much as we can in from all of the records, one way or another. We have so many songs that we want to play at this time, and it is tough to squeeze them all into a reasonable length set, without burning ourselves out. It is a little bit of everything, we have some old songs and new songs in there, sprinkling other things in between; a couple of random surprises that we’ll toss in sometimes, out of nowhere, if we feel like it. It is pretty fun, and a pretty loose vibe on stage so we try to have fun with the set list.
HM: Do you throw in any of the cover songs that you’ve done over the years?
DJ: Sometimes, if we have an itch up our butts at that moment, things will come out. If you look online, we have been messing around with Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” and that has been really interesting.
HM: How would you say audiences not aware of metalcore saw Atreyu when you covered Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name” for the Mr. and Mrs. Smith film soundtrack?
DJ: At the time, it was because 80’s [nostalgia] was kind of like a thing, the whole emo and metalcore thing was a kind of a resurgence of the 80’s. You had 80’s clubs and with that flavour being in there, it just kind of mixed well with what we were doing. Everybody knows that song so it is an easy homerun but it is also interesting because at the time there were a lot of young people who at the time, did not know who Bon Jovi were, they thought it was our song that we wrote, and had no idea that it was a cover song. That’s fine, we’ll take it, you know, thank you Mr. Jon Bon Jovi.
HM: Oh wow, you’d want the royalties there. Anyway, the last album, The Beautiful Dark of Life, prior to the album release, you did some staggered EP releases. How did you find that worked?
DJ: Ah, we liked the way it worked into playing into how people digest music these days. People’s attention spans are much shorter, and they are fed entertainment typically through apps on their phone. So, a lot of the time people are scrolling, whether it be through songs, memes, or TV shows; everything is fast paced so it is hard to keep people’s attention for long. Not that we won’t do this again, but when you put out a full-length record, you have to be careful how you release it. You can put out your lead single for a ten to 15 song album, and you’ll put out songs to tease the record release. Once you’ve put out three singles, that are also on the record, you kind of have done all you can for the record other than just touring on it, at that point, and a lot of times, that record can get swept under the rug, because it didn’t get the music video, the radio push, you know, the whole thing of the single treatment, which really does help to get eyes on a song, and gain some traction with streaming and even with just familiarity of the song. It was technically almost four EPs, but anyway there were three EPs with four songs each, and then when the album came out, it only really had four more new songs, kind of almost making it a fourth EP in a sense, included in the album. All of the EPs names are lyrics from the title track, “The Beautiful Dark of Life”.
HM: I would imagine these are the nightmares of being in the music industry that were never an issue years ago.
DJ: Yeah, and it is evolution, things change, and you’re kind of like, ‘Well, this is the playing field we are on right now, so we are just going to have to play the game that is being presented to us.’ At least for this way of releasing music, it was a fun experiment and good way to see a different approach to things.
HM: Would you say that your musical style has gotten heavier over the years?
DJ: In certain ways, yes. But we have gone in both directions as we are always experimenting and trying new things. We want each album to sound different. We want each album to be their own beast in as many ways as possible. So, there are moments where some of the heavier things on our last album are some of the heaviest things that we have ever done. But also, some of the softest things that we have ever done were also on the last record. When you’re putting together a record, you want to talk people on a journey. Fast or slow the whole time can get a little bit boring. We try to do different things, mixing it up on a setlist, and on an album having every emotion checked off the list as you go through creates a push and pull, with high moments and low moments. It kind of gives you a rounded off experience and keeps the whole album as interesting listening.
HM: Understood – for Lead Sails Paper Anchor, you were touring with Bullet for My Valentine and Avenged Sevenfold. But then in 2019, it was He is Legend and Whitechapel, which is pretty full-on, and a heavier direction.
DJ: Yeah, and that is one the things that has worked for us, because over the years it has almost been that we had two personalities in regard to our sound; having different people singing in the band. So, we could do a tour with In Flames and Hatebreed, and Killswitch Engage, but we could then turn around and do a tour with Taking Back Sunday and My Chemical Romance, and yet it still makes sense for us to be one either shows. That is really exciting for us because we aren’t cornered into one sub-genre, we can be diverse, and also be a gateway band to bring people into listening to heavier music. There are probably a lot of bands out there that have been discovered because they are one or the other, and then somebody heard our band, and it bridged the gap, and off their career goes.
HM: It is a good strategy. Does your long-term production associate John Feldmann contribute to that approach?
DJ: Yeah, but not exactly, because we always had that vibe of having different sides to our music but his influence and working with him was not so much getting rid of the heaviness, but just leaning off the screaming a little bit so it wasn’t at the forefront of everything we were doing, at least for that album in particular. I just see it as another recipe for Atreyu as there is so much, we can do and with every album it is always about doing things differently and keeping it interesting, even if just for ourselves. We want the listener to enjoy it too, and sometimes it can be through a producer, or it can just be from where our heads are at, at the time.
HM: You also worked with Bob Marlette, who worked with both Ozzy and Airbourne.
DJ: It was different, but how do I explain working with Bob? He was a little more laid back, certainly compared to John who is on eleven at all times. He is just go, go, go, with everything in his life, he is always busy, he always needs to be active. So that comes across in the songwriting and with anything that has his involvement. Bob, I feel, has a different energy and you can feel it on that record. There are some fast parts, but the overall groove of Congregation of the Damned, is a bit more held back.
HM: You’ve had plenty of collaborating guests on albums over the years. People like Matt Heafy, Travis Barker, and DJ: Josh Todd. How did working with Sierra Deaton come about?
DJ: She is married to the singer [Luke Hemmings] of Five Seconds of Summer, and they kind of got their start working with John Feldman, so they all know each other very well. They’ve had a lot of success together. Her background was being on the talent TV show The X-Factor in the States, and he’d worked with her on other stuff, and knows how talented she is. He mentioned her when we were potentially looking to write with some other people, even just to get some different perspectives on what we do, and also to learn from people. It is incredible writing with really talented people. She is just amazing, and we ended up doing six songs with her. It was easy to write with her and whilst we didn’t know much about her, when she came in, she sat down at the piano, to sing, and play and wrote all these lyrics and melodies. We were like, ‘Wow, this girl is insanely talented.’ When we demoed that song [“Death or Glory”], she was singing a lot of it herself, just melodies and stuff like that. Listening to her sing over the song, we thought her voice was beautifully haunting, so we thought to just have her on the song now that we’ve heard it that way. We mixed her into the song and again, added another interesting element to our band, that we had never really had before.
HM: How has your songwriting approach changed over the years?
DJ: It has gotten more structured. It used to be more music based so we would write the music and then over that, our singer at the time [Alex Varkatzas] would write lyrics. We would come up with the melodies and guide her a little bit in the vocal delivery and stuff. We would piece songs together like that. We then got to a thing where everyone in the band gets in a room, usually with a producer or engineer to have someone there to record it as we go, and everybody in our band writes, and they all come in with ideas, going around the circle. We feel our way around songs and ideas that way, starting on one song at a time, then voting on it. We pick the song, or riff, whatever it is, we get a click track going to get an initial starting point, we’ll then put down that idea, whether it is a melody, a drum part, a riff, or a lyric, and then we start building on that. Once it is built up enough where the structure is there for the most part, we save it, scoot it off to the side and repeat the process to vote on the next song. We will do this covering one to four songs a day, and within two weeks we might have 25 songs to go through with management team, our label, our friends, our producer and decide what we like and what stands out. We then narrow it down to ten to 15 songs that we want to use. Then we actually go back into the studio and start retracking them all, putting down the actual guitar tones, adding the guitar solos, adding all the harmonies, cutting and pasting, moving the song around, editing the length, adding piano parts, whatever, then we just build it up until it gets to that point and then, boom, you have an album.
HM: Most guitarists lock in with the rhythm section, but now that Brandon [Saller] has moved across to being the front man, has that changed the dynamic in the band at all?
DJ: A little bit but in a really positive way, in that, we didn’t expect. The reason we ended up going with this version of our line-up was because we had a trial run that we kind of got thrown into with it in 2019 in Europe. Not even a week before we were due to go over to Europe, our original singer, Alex, ad an injury and was unable to go. We just could not, not go, we hadn’t been to Europe in a really long time, and we were playing main stages on a lot of festivals that were booked. It was really important for us to get over there, we couldn’t just, a handful of days before this all started, just quit. So, we talked through it with him, and we figured something out. We didn’t want to be, but we had to do what we had to, and so we ended up having Brandon come up front. He was fronting his own band [Hell or Highwater] from 2010 to 2014 when Atreyu was on hiatus. He had learned the ropes of being a frontman and got him the chance to get away from the drums, and being able to fully lean into the range and the ability that he has which is insane. He is one of the most amazing singers out there, especially in our genre. He is legitimately the real deal, he doesn’t need auto tunes, or tracks or anything. It is incredible to work with. Our drum tech at the time, Kyle Rosa, who was also playing drums for Hell or Highwater, was familiar with our set, how we operate, and we know him, and how he tours, so we hit him up to jump as soon as possible from completing an active tour, with one day to practise with us, and we are going to start off at a festival and go out on tour. He agreed and we went out and did it with this lineup and immediately we felt this connection that we did not realise was there. There was a confidence, and this element came out that we didn’t know existed and we had such an incredible time, the shows were good, and we sounded the best we had ever sounded. So, when the time came to part ways with Alex, it seemed like the next best thing that we could do, which made sense, and it was, ‘Well, why don’t we do what we did in Europe?’ So, we did that. It is so much fun and the energy or our band is the strongest that is has ever been. It is like a rebirth, it is amazing.
HM: You mentioned the hiatus of Atreyu, during which Travis [Miguel – rhythm guitar] toured with Trapt. Did you also join in on some side projects?
DJ: Ah, a combination of things, my brother and I own a merchandising company [Rock World Merchandising] that makes shirts for bands, and clothing lines for music festivals, and all that kind of stuff. At the time, we were trying to get that to grow, and Atreyu going on hiatus in 2010 helped. From 2010 to 2013, I was at home in the office with my brother, which started off in our garage, and it evolved from there. So, we grew this company, which is still fruitful for me now, it is a huge part of my life. I had been focussed on that but in 2013 I was really getting the itch to play music again, I got the opportunity to play with this band called Angels Fall, which was a random, stars aligning thing, and I only did one tour with them but it was the strangest tour that I have ever been on. I wish it had been documented as a reality show because it would have been incredible. But that was it, and they had a song called “Drunk Enough”, the singer, Joel Jorgenson moved to Nashville, and he is out there spreading and producing country music, for the most part, but he is a great singer songwriter and a lot of fun. I had scratched that itch until 2014 when I managed to wrangle our band back together.
HM: Indeed, for your guitars, to still use your blood splattered Explorer?
DJ: Yes, and no, I am not using that original one and I don’t play ESP guitars at the moment, I have switched over to Kiesel Guitars and they are based out of Escondido in Southern California. They are all custom, so they only make custom guitars meaning everything is only one of one, which is, for someone like me, I love that, I am a very colourful minded person when it comes to the way I brand and present myself on stage. Kiesel gives me the opportunity to make the wildest, dream come true guitars. My sushi model guitars are insane. The model looks like an Explorer ‘X’ shape, but Jeff Kiesel designed the model for me. It is in their guitar line now, so it is not exclusively for me, but when I went over to them, they didn’t have that shape, and that has kind of become my signature guitar shape. Making that shape was an incentive to come over to Kiesel guitars. He said he wasn’t going to make that shape unless the right person came along, and he loved and respected what I do, so if I came and worked with him, he would add it to their line, and also make it my signature guitar. So, I was like, ‘Hell, yeah!’ It is called a Hyperdrive, and that is the model that I helped him design and helped him come up with a lot of attributes for it. I have been playing those guitars exclusively ever since.
HM: Are your guitar pickups active or passive?
DJ: They are passive, and they are Kiesels as well, as they actually wind their own pickups. They do head to toe everything. Travis [Miguel – rhythm guitar] plays Balaguer guitars, which is another brand that does customs. I don’t know that they exclusively do customs, but they might release x amount of certain things and small batches of stuff. He knows that instead of having to use their pickups, he puts his EMGs in there, which we all played for years. It’s not that I don’t like EMGs anymore, but I tried out the Kiesel ones and they sounded incredible.
HM: There are a number of smaller, boutique luthiers that are starting to pop up, with known guitarists.
DJ: Yeah, there is more love put into these guitars by small companies because a lot of these guys are hand making these guitars. To an extent, I mean some of them are cutting them out by hand, some though, if they get big enough, like Kiesel, they are big enough to have machines that use air to suck the wood down so they can perfectly cut the guitar’s shape out. That speeds up the process but for everything else, as every step of the way, there is a person, for frets, sanding, painting, intonating, electronics. There is a specialist for every step. So, every guitar has so much more love as opposed to being done by a machine or just thrown together.
HM: Yeah, like a signature Strat that just has a name on it.
DJ: Yeah, you know, look some of them, they can make nice versions of that stuff. But, if I’m buying something that is one of a tonne, as in of thousands, it is not as exciting as a one of one or one of ten guitars.
HM: How about amplifiers? You’ve gone digital?
DJ: We’re using the Quad Cortex, my Kemper died in Switzerland. The Quad is a little smaller, more compatible, and little more user friendly than the Kempers, which are a little more complicated to figure out. For the Quad Cortex, you can learn to use that one pretty quickly. It is so much easier and your tone is exactly the same, wherever you go as opposed to renting guitar [amplifier] heads that are not the same ones that you use at home, because they don’t have your boutique amp, so you just use whatever, which is close enough, but the tone is not the same and varies from day to day; that’s just the way of tubes. Not to mention the weight and carrying around these heavy things, and having to pay for the gas, and travel. It is expensive, so having something that is small, light and compatible that has the perfect tone and they you can just plug in, with all of your different effects, it makes life so much easier.
HM: What got you into guitar?
DJ: Initially, in the nineties, I was into Green Day, Nirvana, and Offspring, Rancid and all of that. At the time, that stuff was pretty simple for me, and I could digest it, and learn it. I liked the look of all that and there was this whole vibe around it. Then I started to progress, and a few years later, when I was about fifteen, a friend of mine played me Def Leppard. I had heard Warrant but in the 90’s I was no longer paying attention to that era of music. But all of sudden, in the midst of that era not being a thing, I got excited about it. It was at the furthest from anyone giving a fuck about the 80’s was when I started getting excited about the 80’s. It was weird because at the time, the 80’s seemed so far away but it had just ended, like, five or six years ago. Anyway, it seemed so far away at the time, that it seemed like I was listening to classic rock. I loved Def Leppard, and I loved the tone of the music from the 70’s such as Van Halen, Queen, then with Dio, Scorpions and Whitesnake, all of that stuff was ear candy to me. When a lot of people were getting into Metallica and stuff, that was not really my vibe. It is not that I don’t like Metallica, but they are not as melodic as I like my metal to be. I like more melodic metal, so it was more that, so on the heavier side it got more into In Flames, Arch Enemy, and Soilwork. I got into the Gothenburg sound.
HM: Finally, are you a vinyl fan?
DJ: Yes and no, I mean, I like it, but it is not something I pursue that much, but I had moment, and again this was when nobody cared about vinyl. When we first started touring in the early 2000’s, I was getting vinyls cheap. I got the first AC/DC vinyl album for 25 cents. Nobody cared about vinyl at the time, they were just trying to get rid of it, there was no hype around it.
HM: You’re kidding? In Australia that would be High Voltage, since internationally, early titles were combined. It’s not cheap to get the Alberts era of AC/DC releases nowadays.
DJ: I think it was something like that in that it as OG AC/DC and I don’t think that I paid more than a buck fifty for anything, you know? I got all of the early Van Halen albums, so much good shit from the 70’s and 80’s. I got a hold of at least one hundred vinyls. I paid a fraction of the price that people are paying now because it just wasn’t cool at the time.
HM: I could rabbit on about this for days but the Australian version of Let There Be Rock in good condition could demand somewhere in the vicinity of four to five hundred bucks. So yeah, it has gone to mad prices territory.
DJ: Oh wow. Yeah, it is crazy. It is almost like vintage clothes. I’ll see shirts that I was wearing twenty years ago that people are selling for $85 to $500. I’m like, ‘What the fuck, why is someone selling an Ozzfest shirt from 2004 for $300? Who is buying this stuff? It is a $5 shirt.’
HM: Thanks for chatting and letting me chew your ear off.DJ: Yeah, no problem, thanks for your time.