Press release –
The legacy of Atreyu is closely tied to the formative experiences of a diverse legion of fans worldwide. The band’s riffs, hooks, melodies, lyrics, and passion are essential to the emergence of a vibrant subculture across theaters, clubs, festivals, radio, and playlists. The creative fearlessness and passion that powered landmark albums like The Curse and Lead Sails Paper Anchor are even stronger now.
Unburdened by false restrictions about anything sounding “too heavy” or “too pop,” Atreyu remains a creative beacon of hope for those shaken by the suggestion that “rock is dead.” They’ve entered the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 more than once, and two of their albums are certified gold.
The End is Not the End is undeniably Atreyu’s heaviest album ever and their most adventurous. “We realized what made Atreyu great in the beginning was that we didn’t sound like anyone else,” frontman Brandon Saller explains. “We didn’t really make sense anywhere. We weren’t an emo band, a metal band, a punk band — but somehow it all worked. We kind of just carved our own path.”
Guitarists Dan Jacobs and Travis Miguel, bassist Porter McKnight, drummer Kyle Rosa, and Saller created several of The End is Not the End’s songs on creative trips. “Tokyo made us feel like kids again,” Saller says. “We’d write for a few hours in the morning, then go out and get lost in all this inspiration. The first song we finished was ‘Dead,’ and we knew we were onto something.”
After the Japanese sessions, the band and their producer decamped to San Juan Island off the coast of Washington, where isolation became a creative accelerant. “It was the polar opposite of Tokyo. We didn’t leave the house for four days and wrote some of the heaviest songs on the record.”
The result is an album that feels simultaneously classic and unfamiliar, aggressive and unselfconscious, deeply emotional and unconcerned with trends. Produced by Matt Pauling, Atreyu’s tenth album is vibrant, inventive, and beautifully aggressive. “It’s our heaviest, most metal record we’ve made,” Saller points out. “But it’s also the biggest musical journey we’ve taken in years.”
The album moves seamlessly from soaring melodic heft to muscular metallic weight, with cinematic shades and atmosphere, all tied together by a driving, raw intensity. Tracks like “Dead,” “Ghost in Me,” “Children of Light” (featuring Max Cavalera), and “Afterglow” sound both timely and timeless.
Atreyu’s unquenchable appetite for creative achievement and pursuit of shared catharsis on stage drove them to form the band as teenagers around the turn of the millennium. That drive pushed them beyond their do-it-yourself beginnings to massive festival stages (including two runs on Ozzfest), sold-out headlining tours, movie and game soundtracks, and appearances alongside fellow genre standard-bearers such as Linkin Park, Avenged Sevenfold, Deftones, Slipknot, and Bring Me The Horizon.
A bold chapter in the band’s never-ending story of determination, 2021’s Baptize was a definitive work for a new era. Like 2018’s In Our Wake (which produced the band’s biggest song of the streaming era, “The Time is Now”), Atreyu recorded Baptize with producer John Feldmann. (Pauling worked closely with Feldmann on Atreyu, as well as records by 5 Seconds of Summer, blink-182, and more.)
Breaking with industry convention, the band’s ninth studio album, The Beautiful Dark of Life, arrived first as a series of three four-song EPs, eventually collected together with three more tracks in late 2023. Distorted Sound hailed the album as “a therapeutic exploration of the insecurities that plague many of us, taking the knowledge of that shared experience and wielding it to their own strength.”
In 2024, The Pronoia Sessions deconstructed, recreated, and reshaped the band’s beloved anthems, along with a handful of cover songs, into a haunting and hypnotic new collection. The songs reimagined on The Pronoia Sessions stretch all the way back to 2004’s The Curse and 2006’s A Death-Grip On Yesterday. Two of their biggest hits, “Warrior” and “Save Us,” from Baptize, were reworked, along with some material from The Beautiful Dark of Life, and classics by Tom Petty and Audioslave.
By adeptly combining thrash, hardcore punk, and the New Wave of Swedish Death Metal, Atreyu quickly evolved into a place where fans of everything from Linkin Park to Lamb Of God could come to the party. Adventurous and ambitious, Atreyu is best described simply as a loud rock band.
A massive tour celebrating the anniversary of The Curse closed out 2025, featuring large-scale shows in the UK and a two-night stand at the Glasshouse in Southern California, where Atreyu began. One barricade-free show, in Seattle, was particularly invigorating. “I was calling my wife in tears, like, I feel so alive,” Saller recalls. “It redefined why I do this. If it doesn’t feel exciting, we aren’t interested. Getting together with your friends and playing loud music is cool as fuck. That’s why we started.”
As one prominent hard rock critic observed early in the band’s career: “If you haven’t figured out these guys are aiming for a bigger sound by now, you might want to try cleaning out your ears.”
“We just refuse to become boring,” Saller declares. “We’re not chasing what’s cool. We’re not chasing anything. We’re trying to do what isn’t being done and to play exactly what we want to hear. And somehow, 25-some-odd years later, it’s still growing. We still have much more to accomplish.”
