ATREYU has released the official music video for “Come Down”. The song is taken from the final installment of the band’s three-part EP series, “A Torch In The Dark”, which was made available on November 3, leading into “The Beautiful Dark Of Life” album, out on December 8 via Spinefarm.
Using a psychedelic drug metaphor, the single speaks to current ATREYU mood. “What we’re going through is a high we never want to come down from,” frontman Brandon Saller said. “Those experiences with psychedelics can be very awakening to some people, too,” adds guitarist Dan Jacobs. “They can break you down and give you a bigger, broader perspective of yourself when you come back down, which I feel is a journey we’ve all been on.”
“The Beautiful Dark Of Life” is an emotional journey through three distinct phases accompanying the three EPs — capturing the essence of despair on “The Hope Of A Spark”, the pursuit of hope on “The Moment You Find Your Flame” and the triumphant self-discovery and purpose on “A Torch In The Dark”.
The album features sonic numbers that touch every corner of the heavy music sphere — from metal to punk and alternative, via ’80s classic rock and with shades of industrial, hip-hop, and unashamed pop — speaking more than ever to a generation of music fans who care little for the traditional constraints of genre.
Through the expression of deeply personal feelings and emotions, the album is soul-baring and empathetic and offers escapism, and empowerment through songs that speak openly about anxiety, depression, self-belief, love, and identity that includes three new songs, “Dancing With My Demons”, “Insomnia” and the title track.
“‘The Beautiful Dark Of Life’ is the journey we are all on,” said Saller. “It is the journey we have taken the audience on through the three EPs: the highs, lows, and lessons of life. And much like living through them, you don’t gain a full understanding of what it all means without the whole picture. This album is that picture.”
Bassist/vocalist Marc “Porter” McKnight said: “We wanted each EP to have its own space to exist, for every song to find its audience and connect with people in its own right. But then when those songs are later collected together in the shape of the album, it will be an ‘A-ha!’ moment where we hope people will rediscover them in a new light, and find something in them all over again.”
“I was walking with my young daughter one day when we went under a bridge,” said Saller. “She pointed at something and said, ‘Daddy, what’s that?’ I told her, ‘That’s a shadow, honey.’ And she turned to me and said, ‘Shadows are the beautiful dark of life,'” in discussing the album title.
“The Beautiful Dark Of Life” track listing:
01. Drowning
02. Insomnia
03. Capital F
04. God/Devil
05. Watch Me Burn
06. Good Enough
07. Dancing With My Demons
08. Gone
09. I Don’t Wanna Die
10. Immortal
11. (i)
12. Death Or Glory
13. Forevermore
14. Come Down
15. The Beautiful Dark Of Life
In an interview with Rock 100.5 The KATT‘s Cameron Buchholtz conducted at this past September’s Rocklahoma festival in Pryor, Oklahoma, Saller spoke about ATREYU‘s decision to shift their focus away from releasing albums to putting out a series of EPs.Saller said: “The whole project as a whole kind of tells sort of the same story in repeat. And we just wanted a way to kind of just be able to shine a light on the songs a little bit more individually. I feel like a lot of times you put out albums these days and you get three or four songs that get any sort of attention. The rest of them just go by the wayside, which sucks when you’re creating art and putting everything you have into art.”
He continued: “Each EP goes through the cycles of life, the seasons of life, if you will, to tell one big story at the end. So it’s kind of a way that we can get a little bit more in depth with a kind of a story and also a way that we can have our audience really be able to focus on smaller portions of songs at a time.”
Asked if he and his bandmates are seeing that sort of engagement and fans following the story, Brandon said: “Absolutely. I feel like, you just see it, just when [you look at] the [streaming] numbers, you see each song kind of getting a little bit more of a limelight and having a little bit more of kind of a day in the sun. So that feels nice for us.”
Saller previously talked about ATREYU‘s decision to release a series of EPs this past July in an interview with the “Brutally Delicious” podcast. At the time, he said: “I care less and less about the traditional kind of methods of things and more about, how do we actually get people to have the opportunity to digest all of the art? … You put out an album, put out 12 songs on an album and four of ’em get a light shined on them and are in the tens of millions of streams and have all this attention and then the other eight are in the hundreds of thousands, if that — maybe they hit a million. They’re in the dark and you spent all this time on these songs.
“We’re not a band that has historically put out records with a bunch of filler; it’s hard to get songs past us,” he explained. “So, for us, it’s, like, ‘Oh, well, man, it just didn’t have opportunity to get shown.’
“I’m all about alternative methods of release,” Saller added. “I think that physical release really only lies in vinyl and cool, like, collectors’ kind of stuff these days. I don’t care about CDs. I couldn’t play a CD if I wanted to. I don’t have a CD [player] in my car. I don’t have a CD player in my computer. But as far as just releasing things, I just wanna release things that make it more accessible and easy to actually consume and digest them. And I think that that potentially is in singles and EPs. I don’t know everything or anything. So we’ll see how it goes.”
ATREYU and MEMPHIS MAY FIRE recently joined forces for the “We Want Your Misery” tour, with CATCH YOUR BREATH and ANOTHER DAY DAWNS as support. ATREYU also joined GODSMACK for select dates before embarking on a run of Canadian shows with IRON MAIDEN, starting on September 28.
Photo credit: Micala Austin