Metal Anarchy

During a recent appearance on the Scars And Guitars podcast, Atreyu’s Alex Varkatzas talked a bit about the band’s upcoming album. According to the frontman, the new music will be “depressing sounding, rocking shit.’

Varkatzas said the following when asked about pre-production:

“There is zero pre-production. We’re fucking ballers, man. We’ve been doing this for so long. I write lyrics in my sleep. Literally, I wake up and I have a line and I write them down. And there’s two songs from this record — if they make the record, of course — that is literally me waking up in the middle of the night, and I have to write down lyrics or something. But that’s the way it goes, man.

“We’ve been doing this — it’s 20 years. We’re not good at a whole bunch, but we’re okay at this. And John Feldmann, our producer — he did ‘Lead Sails’ — he has crazy energy. He has more energy than us, and he’s a few years older than us. And so when we get around him, it pumps us up. And no matter what, we write one song a day. Every now and then, we crank out two songs a day. So, I think in three weeks — realistically, we work on the weekdays; we don’t work on the weekend — I think we had 18 or 19 songs. And that’s just in our first block. So we’ll come back and we’ll probably write at least another dozen songs.”

He went on to say the effort will be their “next step in maturity.” He continued:

“To me, in a way — and this is a fucking weird way to sell a record, because it doesn’t sound like this — it has some very dark ’80s gothic pop elements. And I don’t mean ‘pop’ as in happy[-sounding music]. It’s just depressing sounding, rocking shit.”

Varkatzas also talked about the lyrical themes in the group’s new material:

“It’s cool, because especially right now, there’s so much… If you’re a comedian and a musician, there’s lots of good inspiration every day — especially in America, unfortunately. Actually, all over the world, but in American especially, it’s ripe with things that make you feel something, whatever it is. Maybe you’re happy about it, maybe you’re sad about it — it’s not my place to speak for people. But you feel some shit right now. And I think comedians handle it by making fun of it, and I handle it by making music and words about it. So, it’s a good time to be inspired.”

[via Blabbermouth]