Atreyu give us a Taste Of Chaos

05 November 2008

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Atreyu are one of the best Metalcore bands to emerge from Orange County in, well, forever. Their shows always promise to be adrenaline packed and full of sweat.

I caught up with the man of many women’s dreams, Alex Varkatzas to find out about life on the road, writing albums on the fly and what he would do with only days to live.

Hey Alex! How are you enjoying being in the UK?

Wonderfully; I haven’t got sick yet which is good!

Where have you enjoyed playing on the tour?

I think at this point I am looking forward to playing Oxford so that I can go home. The whole tour has been really cool and fun and the whole vibe is probably the best we’ve had in years.

That’s always good; so how did you end up as the headliner for the Taste Of Chaos Rockstar tour?

The people who run Taste Of Chaos had spoken to us after we did the tour in the States earlier this year with Avenged Sevenfold and Bullet For My Valentine. It was a no brainer for us.

What has the crowd reaction been like?

Awesome. The kids are really enthusiastic and loud and for us, that interaction really affects how we play and how we enjoy our shows. If the kids are into it and rocking it’s worth it even if there are only five people there; but if there are 1,000 people there and they’re just staring at you then it’s not really as good.

What are your plans for when the tour is over?

Go and make up for lost time with my girlfriend! I’m going to go home and have a month off. In the past six to eight months the most time we’ve had off is about two weeks and I’m kind of tired now so it will be really nice to catch my breath.

Do you find it easier now to maintain relationships now than in the beginning?

Yeah. With a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship I think it has more to do with the other person. I’m with the right person now so it’s great. As far as family goes; that’s all on me. I get a little weird sometimes as certain things will bring you down and make you not want to call home and then sometimes all you’ll want to do is speak to people back home, so it’s kind of a mix.

Can we expect any new material any time soon?

Not soon but relatively soon. The record cycle is basically done after this tour. We’re going to go home and take time off but we might do a few demos and then in February we will start pre-production.

Is there a certain process you go through when writing songs?

The best stuff just comes out and the stuff you have to force out is just filler. The whole Lead Sails Paper Anchor record to me is filler. I feel like we could have done better with it. The way we wrote it was to sit down in pre-production and as they were writing the guitar parts I wrote the lyrics for every single song in two to four hours and then I would go back and change little parts but I had to do it all on the fly.

I have a lot of confidence in myself and I’m pretty good at what I do but that was really hard and I don’t think it was my best work. So I don’t think we’ll do anything like that again.

What do you think is your best album then?

Musically and performance-wise I would still say that Lead Sails is. But I just think that lyrically, I could have done more. I think it’s our best body of work but lyrically I really like Death Grip On Yesterday and The Curse.

With The Curse I was really finding myself and with Death Grip On Yesterday I was much more comfortable but that record got hardly any recognition.

Boo, that must have been disappointing. So to move on to happier topics, what is your favourite song to sing live?

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