Atreyu - A Death-Grip On Yesterday Review
Posted by Brandon Ratliff on 03.31.2006
...And a Life-Grip On Tomorrow.
Atreyu - A Death-Grip On Yesterday
Release Date: March 28, 2006
Label: Victory Records
Produced By: Josh Abraham and Atreyu
First Single: Ex's And Oh's
Recommended Downloads: Shameful, Creature, Ex's And Oh's
Tracklisting
1. Creature
2. Shameful
3. Our Sick Story (Thus Far)
4. The Theft
5. We Stand Up
6. Ex's And Oh's
7. Your Private War
8. My Fork In The Road (Your Knife In My Back)
9. Untitled Finale
Total Runtime: 32:53
Atreyu is:
Vocals: Alex Varkatzas
Guitar: Dan Jacobs
Guitar: Travis Miguel
Bass/Vocals: Marc McKnight
Drums/Vocals: Brandon Saller
Additional Performers:
Vocals: Mike Milford (Our Sick Story), Brett Anderson (Creature, Shameful)
Rarely does a band with the songwriting prowess and talent level get so widely hated in the metal community as Atreyu. Their guitarists could play circles around most modern rock axemen, and Alex Varkatzas has a range that makes many death metal vocalists look like amateurs, so why all the hate? Read that last line again. Just because Varkatzas has a voice that the basement-dwelling, Blabbermouth-reading community would quickly label as emo, and the music fashion/mall/metal/scene/SomeOtherTermEndingIn-core, apparently that means that the alleged Gods of metal (whom shall remain nameless) could be recorded taking a shit after eating some particularly spicy Asian food, and it would sound better. Is this the case? Of course not. I try not to play the pretentious music critic and look at it like whatever sounds good to you, you should listen to, but these people sadly aren't so open minded. The problem though is a lot of the fans of Atreyu seem to be shallow Myspace whores who only like them because they are hard-x-core. So, because of that, they end up losing a lot of musical credibility to the so called elites in the music world (which it wouldn't surprise me if this very site contained one or two of such people) who won't really take the time to indulge themselves in the musicianship it takes to play some of the content on this, or any of the band's other albums. As I said before I try to stay a little more open minded, so we're going to attempt to take a little more objective look at Atreyu's new, albeit short album A Death-Drip On Yesterday.
Pretention and snot-nosed cliches aside, Atreyu, while not extremely unique, are very good at what they do. Truthfully, there are a lot of bands out there that carry the same general sound as they do (Avenged Sevenfold comes to mind), but Atreyu carry a sharp edge to their guitars and vocals that soar like an eagle in a blue sky. The riffing is top-notch, the bass and drums are pounding, and the lyrics are pretty well written. The album is also...*gasp!*...catchy as hell, and no, that's not a bad thing. Tracks like the throbbing Creatures and the album's first single Ex's And Oh's will have you either singing, or at least humming along by the second listen. There is a noticable lack of guitar solos on the album which is a change from The Curse, which on a couple of points began to tread into the wankery of soloing for the sake of it, but otherwise the musicianship is top notch. Drummer Brandon Saller particularly shines on most of the tracks, providing the necessary drumming to complement the hardcore-styled start/stop riffing. The Theft is this album's take on ballads, it for the most part it's done pretty well. The chorus riff would have been helped a lot by a lead guitar line put into the mix, but it works as is. We Stand Up is an uptempo track with crushing guitars and drumming as well, and the ironically named Untitled Finale, being the longest track on the album, has the chance to serve as a retrospective, with the listener being album to hear a little of everything the album has to offer in the one track.
You know, the one thing that plauges releases of bands of this sort is issues with the final mix, and that is the case here as well. On a large portion of the album both guitars are way too low in the mix, and at certain points it kind of doesn't let you feel the pounding of the riffing as you otherwise would. The verse of Creature comes straight to mind, and imagine this track with the guitars and the bass turned up a bit...it would, quite frankly, sound heavy as hell. There are a couple of points as well where the vocals could have used some extremely light EQ tweaking as they came through a bit muddy on the tape whereas they probably would have sounded a little better had the treble been increased a bit. Minor points to be sure, but if you listen to the album on low end speakers (such as those of the laptop I am using...thankfully I listened to the whole album in my car as well), these issues will probably occur to you as well. Really though, there's nothing wrong with the album besides that, and the simple fact that at nine songs totaling barely over a half hour, the album is WAY too short. Too much of a good thing gets old for sure, but eleven or twelve songs at least would have been nice.
The length of the album is definitely an issue, but besides that and the aforementioned minor issues with the mix, there's really nothing you can fault the band with. They basically deliver what you'd expect (especially if you were a prior fan), which is an album full of heavy but catchy metal tunes. Yeah, Atreyu is a metal band, and if you think otherwise, try getting off of the Blabbermouth forums and getting some fresh air, whether in a literal sense by going outside (OH MY GOD! SUNLIGHT!), or in a proverbial sense in checking out something that is not the new Exhorder or Demon Burger (which is Dimmu Borgir for you brats) records (which all sound the goddamn same...yeah, I said it). Maybe try the new Atreyu record? Go ahead, it's okay if the Al Bundy and motolov laugh at you, they're not your real friends anyways. They probably go and rock out to some Livin' La Vida Loca (which admittedly, I used to do before I got into hard rock and metal back in 2000) after logging off anyhow, so it's not like they really mean what they say.
Oh the irony...people bash bands that it is popular to bash because they are popular to dig.
By the way, if I hear someone say "Agayu" one more time, I'm going to kill someone. What is it with people and making up retarded alterations of a band that they don't like's name? Geez.
And one last question...why isn't this album stickered? There's not a huge amount of swearing on it, but definitely enough to warrant the sticker. I even bought mine at Wal-Mart, and it is completely unedited.
The 411: A solid album full of catchy metal tracks, Atreyu really don't do anything wrong besides show laziness by recording only nine damn songs. I would look for it at a chain store like Best Buy where it is only ten bucks so you can get your money's worth, but if you liked the band before you will love this record, and if you are a little more open-minded than the vast majority of the internet community, you should at least give this one a listen. It's pretty good stuff.
