“PRONOIA”: the belief that the world is conspiring in your favor; the opposite of paranoia.
ATREYU is a band with a legacy seamlessly intertwined with formative experiences for a diverse legion of listeners around the world. The Pronoia Sessions deconstructs, recreates, and reshapes the Orange County, California, band’s beloved anthems (and cover songs) as a haunting and hypnotic new collection. What began as an acoustic album evolved into a grand re-imagining of ATREYU classics.
The genesis stretches back to a series of acoustic performances at special events on the road. “We had the idea to do a show similar to Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged as a one-off thing,” explains frontman Brandon Saller. “Then we thought, ‘Why not spend some time on it in the studio?’ And it built from there. ‘How far can we push this?’ It spawned from there and unexpectedly turned into this monster.”
ATREYU’s riffs, hooks, melodies, lyrics, and passion are essential parts of a vibrant subculture’s emergence across theaters, clubs, festivals, radio, and playlists. The artistic fearlessness powering landmark albums like The Curse and Lead Sails Paper Anchor is even stronger in 2024. “Becoming the Bull,” one of the two gold singles released in 2007, takes on new life on The Pronoia Sessions.
The songs reimagined on The Pronoia Sessions stretch all the way back to 2004’s The Curse (“Right Side of the Bed”) and 2006’s A Death-Grip On Yesterday (“Ex’s & Ohs,” “The Theft”). Two of their biggest hits, “Warrior” and “Save Us,” are reworked from 2021’s Baptize. And there are new versions of “Gone” and “Drowning” from their most recent release, 2023’s The Beautiful Dark of Life.
In addition to their own songs, ATREYU offers dark takes on Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers classic “Last Dance for Mary Jane” and the enduring, Chris Cornell-led Audioslave ballad “Like a Stone.”
“Let’s see how we can take what exits already and turn it on its head. With some of the older stuff, the vocals have a more melodic approach, but with much of the same phrasing,” Saller explains. “We’ve also incorporated more members of the band. Porter sings, like on ‘Ex’s & Ohs.’ On ‘Right Side of the Bed,’ there’s a saxophone solo instead of a guitar solo, and it’s Dan playing the saxophone.”
Unbound by false restrictions about anything sounding “too heavy” or “too pop,” ATREYU remains a creative beacon of hope for the people shaken by the suggestion that “rock is dead.” They’ve broken into the Top 10 in the Billboard 200 more than once; two of their albums are certified gold.
ATREYU’s unquenchable appetite for creative achievement and pursuit of a shared catharsis on stage drove them to form the band as teenagers around the turn of the millennium. It 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, including Linkin Park, Avenged Sevenfold, Deftones, Slipknot, and Bring Me The Horizon.
A bold chapter in the band’s never-ending story of determination, 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. Guests included Jacoby Shaddix (Papa Roach), Travis Barker (blink-182), and Matt Heafy (Trivium). Songs like “Warrior,” “Catastrophe,” “Save Us,” and “Underrated” are massive, standing confidently in the band’s catalog.
Breaking with music 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 all together with three more tracks. The band co-headlined with Memphis May Fire and toured with Godsmack around the EPs.
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.”
Adeptly combining the sounds of thrash, hardcore punk, and the New Wave of Swedish Death Metal, ATREYU quickly evolved to a place where fans of everything from Linkin Park to Lamb Of God could come to the party. Adventurous, ambitious; ATREYU is best described plainly as a loud rock band.
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.”
LINE-UP
Brandon Saller – Vocals
Dan Jacobs – Guitar
Travis Miguel – Guitar
Porter McKnight – Bass
Kyle Rosa – Drums
