The Reunion You’ve All Been Anxiously Awaiting: Atreyu!!

They threatened to do it, and now it’s official: Atreyu have reunited! MetalSucks readers and IMNs everywhere are surely throwing a fit right about now.

I know it’s cool to hate on Atreyu, but they were actually really important to the early ’00s metalcore scene (especially Suicide Notes and Butterfly Kisses, which in 2002 was lightyears ahead of its time) and the Victory Records / OC metalcore scene that came out of it (for better or worse), along with Avenged Sevenfold, Eighteen Visions and others (and before Killswitch Engage, Shadows Fall and the like really caught on). Hindsight shows us that Atreyu went on to inspire a decade’s worth of horrible, shitty bands — including themselves, once they signed with Island Records — but I firmly back 2004’s The Curse and 2006’s A Deathgrip on Yesterday despite the overabundance of clean vocals that, in the words of the great Axl Rosenberg, “make Phil Labonte sound like Rob Halford.” There’s some hella good songs on those albums and co-guitarists Travis Miguel and Dan Jacobs wrote a whole lot of excellent riffs.

Not that I’m particularly excited about this Atreyu reunion. I’m neither here nor there on it. If you’ve been following metal for the past decade then you know that everyone reunites, and Atreyu were bound to do so too sooner rather than later. Just that, you know, maybe this band isn’t as terrible as we give them credit for being. But IMNs are gonna IMN no matter what!

Atreyu’s live return will happen at the Aftershock festival on September 14th in Sacramento, CA, and the press release we received hints that new music is on the way but stops short of promising it.

So, that happened.