Alex in action
Atreyu are one of the best Metalcore bands to emerge from Orange County in, well, forever. Their shows always promise to be adrenaline packed and full of sweat.
I caught up with the man of many women’s dreams, Alex Varkatzas to find out about life on the road, writing albums on the fly and what he would do with only days to live.
Hey Alex! How are you enjoying being in the UK?
Wonderfully; I haven’t got sick yet which is good!
Where have you enjoyed playing on the tour?
I think at this point I am looking forward to playing Oxford so that I can go home. The whole tour has been really cool and fun and the whole vibe is probably the best we’ve had in years.
That’s always good; so how did you end up as the headliner for the Taste Of Chaos Rockstar tour?
The people who run Taste Of Chaos had spoken to us after we did the tour in the States earlier this year with Avenged Sevenfold and Bullet For My Valentine. It was a no brainer for us.
What has the crowd reaction been like?
Awesome. The kids are really enthusiastic and loud and for us, that interaction really affects how we play and how we enjoy our shows. If the kids are into it and rocking it’s worth it even if there are only five people there; but if there are 1,000 people there and they’re just staring at you then it’s not really as good.
What are your plans for when the tour is over?
Go and make up for lost time with my girlfriend! I’m going to go home and have a month off. In the past six to eight months the most time we’ve had off is about two weeks and I’m kind of tired now so it will be really nice to catch my breath.
Do you find it easier now to maintain relationships now than in the beginning?
Yeah. With a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship I think it has more to do with the other person. I’m with the right person now so it’s great. As far as family goes; that’s all on me. I get a little weird sometimes as certain things will bring you down and make you not want to call home and then sometimes all you’ll want to do is speak to people back home, so it’s kind of a mix.
Can we expect any new material any time soon?
Not soon but relatively soon. The record cycle is basically done after this tour. We’re going to go home and take time off but we might do a few demos and then in February we will start pre-production.
Is there a certain process you go through when writing songs?
The best stuff just comes out and the stuff you have to force out is just filler. The whole Lead Sails Paper Anchor record to me is filler. I feel like we could have done better with it. The way we wrote it was to sit down in pre-production and as they were writing the guitar parts I wrote the lyrics for every single song in two to four hours and then I would go back and change little parts but I had to do it all on the fly.
I have a lot of confidence in myself and I’m pretty good at what I do but that was really hard and I don’t think it was my best work. So I don’t think we’ll do anything like that again.
What do you think is your best album then?
Musically and performance-wise I would still say that Lead Sails is. But I just think that lyrically, I could have done more. I think it’s our best body of work but lyrically I really like Death Grip On Yesterday and The Curse.
With The Curse I was really finding myself and with Death Grip On Yesterday I was much more comfortable but that record got hardly any recognition.
Boo, that must have been disappointing. So to move on to happier topics, what is your favourite song to sing live?
Not Doomsday. My least favourite song to sing live is Doomsday and Blow. I like Becoming The Bull when my voice is really warmed up and feels good. When I hit those notes it feels really good because it pulls at everything in my core. But when I don’t hit them it really pisses me off and I just sit on the bus and sulk after the show!
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.
That’s a great theory. So can you come up with a question for Story Of The Year please?
Ask them what they think is the best show they have played on this tour is and what they think has been Atreyu’s best show.
FemaleFirst - Ruth Harrison
Atreyu are one of the best Metalcore bands to emerge from Orange County in, well, forever. Their shows always promise to be adrenaline packed and full of sweat.
I caught up with the man of many women’s dreams, Alex Varkatzas to find out about life on the road, writing albums on the fly and what he would do with only days to live.
Hey Alex! How are you enjoying being in the UK?
Wonderfully; I haven’t got sick yet which is good!
Where have you enjoyed playing on the tour?
I think at this point I am looking forward to playing Oxford so that I can go home. The whole tour has been really cool and fun and the whole vibe is probably the best we’ve had in years.
That’s always good; so how did you end up as the headliner for the Taste Of Chaos Rockstar tour?
The people who run Taste Of Chaos had spoken to us after we did the tour in the States earlier this year with Avenged Sevenfold and Bullet For My Valentine. It was a no brainer for us.
What has the crowd reaction been like?
Awesome. The kids are really enthusiastic and loud and for us, that interaction really affects how we play and how we enjoy our shows. If the kids are into it and rocking it’s worth it even if there are only five people there; but if there are 1,000 people there and they’re just staring at you then it’s not really as good.
What are your plans for when the tour is over?
Go and make up for lost time with my girlfriend! I’m going to go home and have a month off. In the past six to eight months the most time we’ve had off is about two weeks and I’m kind of tired now so it will be really nice to catch my breath.
Do you find it easier now to maintain relationships now than in the beginning?
Yeah. With a boyfriend/girlfriend relationship I think it has more to do with the other person. I’m with the right person now so it’s great. As far as family goes; that’s all on me. I get a little weird sometimes as certain things will bring you down and make you not want to call home and then sometimes all you’ll want to do is speak to people back home, so it’s kind of a mix.
Can we expect any new material any time soon?
Not soon but relatively soon. The record cycle is basically done after this tour. We’re going to go home and take time off but we might do a few demos and then in February we will start pre-production.
Is there a certain process you go through when writing songs?
The best stuff just comes out and the stuff you have to force out is just filler. The whole Lead Sails Paper Anchor record to me is filler. I feel like we could have done better with it. The way we wrote it was to sit down in pre-production and as they were writing the guitar parts I wrote the lyrics for every single song in two to four hours and then I would go back and change little parts but I had to do it all on the fly.
I have a lot of confidence in myself and I’m pretty good at what I do but that was really hard and I don’t think it was my best work. So I don’t think we’ll do anything like that again.
What do you think is your best album then?
Musically and performance-wise I would still say that Lead Sails is. But I just think that lyrically, I could have done more. I think it’s our best body of work but lyrically I really like Death Grip On Yesterday and The Curse.
With The Curse I was really finding myself and with Death Grip On Yesterday I was much more comfortable but that record got hardly any recognition.
Boo, that must have been disappointing. So to move on to happier topics, what is your favourite song to sing live?
Not Doomsday. My least favourite song to sing live is Doomsday and Blow. I like Becoming The Bull when my voice is really warmed up and feels good. When I hit those notes it feels really good because it pulls at everything in my core. But when I don’t hit them it really pisses me off and I just sit on the bus and sulk after the show!