Atreyu On Their ‘We Want Your Skulls’ Australian Tour

‘There’s a new trilogy, people see them, people hate them, and I’m still in the same boat. Yeah, they’re not perfect movies, but I’m just thankful to have all this Star Wars stuff to sink my teeth into. At the end of the day, they’re just fucking movies. Granted, we all hold it very close to our hearts, and it’s a big part of our lives, for better for worse, but it’s just a movie.’

Travis Miguel, guitarist in California metalcore band Atreyu professes his love for the iconic Star Wars franchise. A franchise that has grown up with its audience over the decades, a franchise that has seems major players change, a franchise that remains viably prevalent and revered by many, a franchise that releases products in threes. Much like his band Atreyu.

Hot on the hells of their most recent release The Beautiful Dark Of Life, an album released in three parts during 2023, the band will soon embark on a national tour of Australia, their first since March 2020 and the big shut down.

‘Actually, at the time, we were nervous because we weren’t sure if we were going to be able to get home, because there were talks of a flu-like virus that’s in China, and it’s slowly starting to spread, and then there were talks of borders being closed. We were asking ourselves, “Are we even going to be able to get home?” But luckily we ended up getting home and then I think, if I remember correctly, it was like the next week the whole world shut down, so we made it out by the skin of our teeth.’

‘It’s one of those places where if we ever get asked to go, the only question we have is, “When does our flight leave?” Because the shows are always good. Everybody there is super cool, super welcoming. The weather is much like Southern California where we’re all from. The beaches are beautiful. The weather is great most of the time. Yeah, it’s almost like having the best parts of California and England together, which I don’t think there really exists any other place like that in the world. Yeah, Australia’s always been a good time.’

Since their last visit, the band have dropped two albums however also lost vocalist Alex Varkatzas. Creatively it has not stopped the bands output. Last year album was released in three parts – The Hope And The Spark, The Moment You Find Your Flame and A Torch In The Dark – and of the fifteen songs, there are eight videos.

‘There’s no sense in just dwelling on the past. We’ve always overcome obstacles, just kept moving forward and let the past be the past. Yeah, I mean there was a difference, but like I said, it wasn’t a detrimental aspect to the overall writing process. We just put our heads down and got to work.

We just wanted to try something different than your traditional album rollout. People nowadays, we all consume music a little differently. Not to date myself, but back in my day, we had to wait for an album to be released, actually go to a store, and buy a physical copy of it. Those days, that ship has sailed. Sailed a long time ago actually. We figured, let’s just give it in bite-size pieces and let people live with it and let each track get its time in the sun, so to speak.

For the most part, we just wanted to try something different, just to see how it would work for us. The industry itself seems to be going down that road anyway. It also lengthens your overall touring cycle of the record. If you release an EP of four or five songs, you can tour off that for a little bit, release another four or five songs, and then tour off of that. You can just stretch out the lifespan of the touring cycle as Well. Yeah, it’s working smarter, not harder.’

The writing process has even changed, becoming prolific.

‘Before it was very much, we lock ourselves in our rehearsal space for however many months and just start grinding on writing stuff. But this time it’s a little bit more, I guess experimental, just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks.

Even from there, this whole writing session that we had for this record, we just kept writing and writing and writing, to the point where our producer, John Feldman, was like, “All right, you guys need to just stop.” Which is the first time anybody has ever told us to do that. I think we had 20-plus, at least, ideas for songs.’

While the band pump out their creative minds onto the new internet world, Travis doesn’t pan much gold back from internet comments.

‘Me personally, I avoid comment sections like the plague, just the way my brain is wired, I’m going to just hone in on every single negative one, and then just get so aggravated and frustrated. I’m just better off, ignorance is bliss, so to speak.’

Talking of online comments sections, Travis was at one stage a member of Trapt, who leader Chris Taylor Brown made controversial use of a few years back.

‘All of that stuff happened probably a good two or three years after I left that camp. I think I dodged a pretty big bullet. Yeah, I don’t regret serving time in Trapt. I got paid to play guitar. That’s all I ever wanted really. At the end of the day, I was just a hired gun for the most part too. It wasn’t really a lot of skin off my back. I’m just glad that I was out of the equation when all that stuff went down.’

From hired gun to axeman in Atreyu, twenty plus years of hi-octane metal, the band always put on an electric show which Australian fans can look forward to getting sweaty at.

‘I think maybe subconsciously, I think the five of us might be just trying to prove to ourselves that we can still do this after twenty-plus years of doing this. As far as the stage show itself goes, we’re a little bit more, I guess, lax and a little bit more ourselves. There’s less posturing. The five of us are for the most part, just five overgrown children, and we conduct ourselves accordingly. Some of that comes through on stage. I don’t want to say we stopped giving a fuck, but we’ve just let our, I guess, sillier, looser side come out on stage a little bit more. It’s just more fun for us. So far from what we’ve seen, the audience has been gravitating toward that too and have been really digging it. It just makes it more fun for us just to relax, be our stupid selves on stage, let people get a glimpse of the ridiculousness of who the five of us are.’

Travis is forever working as Atreyu still have some songs in the pipeline to be worked on, they have summer festivals already announced keeping them going until August and in between Travis side project Fake Figures have just released an EP From Within with a handful of shows and more music to come. However conversation returns to one subject in particular.

‘If you have a Wookie by your side, nobody’s fucking with you. I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Chewbacca, because he’s loyal. He’s great with machinery. He’s obviously great in a fight. Yeah, I wouldn’t mind having Chewbacca hang out with me.’

I know he’s talking about a Star Wars character however it could just as easily be his own band, Atreyu.

Interview By Iain McCallum

Catch Atreyu on the following dates, tickets from Silverback Touring…