Atreyu give us a Taste Of Chaos (page 2)

5 November 2008

What band would you most like to tour with?

We have always said it, and it’s never happened and I’m not sure if it ever will but we have always wanted to tour with AFI. We’ve never even played a show with them which is weird considering that every other band from Orange County - Avenged Sevenfold, Throwdown, Bleeding Through - have played with them and we haven’t. I take it personally.

Get on the phone and be like…hey! But apart from when that happens, what has been the proudest moment of your career so far?

Pulling off some of the stuff I did on Lead. Sails and doing it live. When I play stuff that I challenged myself on it’s a rush for me as I feel my body temperature rise.

What is there left on your ‘to do’ list?

It’s kind of weird because I was asked this question a long time ago and it was before Suicide Notes And Butterfly kisses came out and I wanted to tour the country once and release one record which sold 20,000 copies. I told myself that if it sold 20,000 I would finish the rest of my [tattoo] sleeve.

Then it happened and I felt cheated since then because the honest, pure part of the goal I got; everything else would just be money or greed because my first goal had been reached.

No one thought we would do anything. Everyone in Orange Country disliked us and talked down on us. There was a lot of beef and drama with the ‘cool kids’ but we’re still here.

What’s on your iPod at the moment?

Right now - it has nothing to do with the fact that we’re on tour with them - Story Of The Year’s new record is amazing. I also really enjoy everything the Alkaline Trio does.

What advice would you give to kids trying to make their way into the music industry?

Quit your band and become a manager or a booking agent; don’t join a record label. The record industry isn’t doing as well as it once did.

Do you think that’s a result of downloading?

I think it is to an extent; but also because people don’t really think about what they are doing: it’s almost like stealing. You wouldn’t go into a record store and just take a cd without paying for it.

We spend a lot of money on a record and then no one buys it because they can just take it from the internet - that’s just stealing.

Is the life of a rock star what you imagined it to be?

All the rock stars I’ve met have been douche bags but I’ll let you know if I ever become one! Ha-ha! There are obviously huge plusses to being in a band which are way radder than 90% of what most people experience but then at the same time, there are huge penalties you have to pay for these.

Such as?

You miss daily life which is everything from births and death, birthdays and funerals that can never be replaced. No matter how much money I make out here, I can never recreate my brother’s high school graduation, I won’t be there to post up for my family when my Grandfather dies and be a strong person for them. That kind of stuff bothers me.

What would you be doing if you weren’t in a band?

Punching dudes in the face and lifting weights.

Why - would you be a wrestler?

I’m studying to become a certified personal trainer in the States and Dan trains Brazilian Jujitsu on top of my Thai Boxing so technically we do wrestle with each other.

At home I train Monday - Friday twice a day and then once on Saturday. I didn’t know how much a physical person I was until a few years ago.

If you had one last thing to do in life and money was no object; what would you do?

Honestly, I would make sure that my mum and dad knew how much I love them and how much of an amazing job they did raising me. The things that you can take with you when you go have nothing to do with money. If there is some sort of afterlife then what’s in your heart and head is what goes; I can’t take these clothes, six pack abs and a pocket full of money.

You take the memories and the love that you have. I would make sure they knew even thought I can’t always be the most outward with them. I never talk about this stuff in interviews because I don’t like to talk about my personal life but I would thank my girlfriend - I feel lame calling her my girlfriend because she deserves so much more than that. I don’t cheat on my girlfriend or anything like that but I’m pretty hard to get along with sometimes so she is sort of the wet nap to my dirtiness!

Aww that is lovely; I need to collect myself a boy like that! They need to have brains and so I put to you Matt Heafy‘s question; How would you solve the current economic crisis in the US?

I would tax the rich people loads and them make it progressively less as people made less. I would tier all the taxes starting with the huge corporations in the USA. I would impose tax brackets and anyone who is classed as ‘middle class’ and lower would have to pay less taxes because they need their money to put back into the ‘system.’

Actually, the heavy metal answer would be that I would take the CEO’s from the nine biggest corporations and I would line them all up in front of each other and shoot them in the head and then get new people in charge.