Atreyu: “The truth of the matter is that nothing is over until you say it is – there is always tomorrow”

Tuning into Kerrang! TV around the year 2004, you wouldn’t have had to wait long to get a look at red hot metalcore prospects Atreyu. All cool tattoos and streaked eyeliner, shredded six-strings and stadium-ready sing-alongs, the Californian crew felt like poster boys for the seductively vampish brand of metalcore ruling heavy music. Hell, in the video for Right Side Of The Bed, the awesome lead single from breakout second LP The Curse, they even managed to rope in wrestling royalty The Bella Twins for an eye-catching cameo – three years before they’d step foot into a WWE ring.

If you’d told fans back then that 22 years down the line the same band would be releasing their 10th album, titled The End Is Not The End and full of songs like Dead, Death Rattle, Ghost In Me and In The Dark, chances are they’d imagine that the older Atreyu had gone full goth. Frontman Brandon Saller grins at this suggestion. Chilling in a tour bus outside Des Moines, Iowa, in 2026 their hot-blooded ghoulishness has in fact softened into familial warmth and real gratitude to still be here.

“Since day one, we’ve been a band that people have loved to doubt or wish ill upon,” Brandon digs into that provocative album title. “Ours has been a rocky road, a fighting road. But we’ve continued to prove those doubters wrong. And the idea that the end is not the end can apply throughout life. There are so many experiences that feel so final – losing a job; losing a friend or relationship; a death in the family – where you feel so crushed that imagining what comes next feels impossible. But the truth of the matter is that nothing is over until you say it is. There is always tomorrow.”

Making the most of the days stretching out in front of them has been pivotal for the Atreyu we meet today. Creeping into their 40s, death is less a romanticised spectre haunting the outer shadows of their reality than a day-to-day matter of fact. It’s the other side of the coin to that exciting period when everyone is having kids, Brandon reflects, and when elders start to pass away.

“But it can also be the point where you learn to live life the right way, to be your true self, to take advantage of all the things you have,” he nudges, optimistically. “When people begin to die, you’re forced to enjoy how you live. There’s a song on this album called Ego Death. I think of ego death as an opportunity, to let go of the negative person you might be and any shortcomings they have.”

Making music is an adventure. But it’s taken the best part of a quarter-century for Brandon and his bandmates, guitarists Dan Jacobs and Travis Miguel, bassist Porter McKnight and drummer Kyle Rosa to understand that adventure doesn’t need to be confined to the inside of creatives’ minds. Rather than ensconcing themselves in some secluded studio, for instance, much of the writing of this record was split between Tokyo and San Juan Island off the coast of Washington state.

“We’ve been a band for 27 years,” Brandon shrugs. “We’ve done this in every way possible and we’ve come to the realisation that there’s a perception in the music business of how things work – you go to the studio, you’re uncomfortable, this is how you make music, then this is how you need to tour. But music is art. You can do whatever the fuck you want.

“We had a show booked in Jakarta and our guitar player Dan just asked, ‘Why don’t we go to Tokyo beforehand? We can get acclimated to the time change, we break up the flight, and we can write some music...’ So why the fuck not? Likewise, a friend of my aunt has this incredible house right out on the water on San Juan island. I was there like six years ago and said, ‘This would be a great place to make a record.’ She just told me to tell her when, and preparing for this album again I thought, ‘Why the hell not?’”

Brandon affectionately terms this as the ‘Why not?’ and ‘Why not us?’ era of Atreyu. It’s about seeing the doors that life presents to us all and finding the confidence to actually walk through them. Crucially, it’s a mentality that lends itself to the creative process. Hiring an Airbnb in the bustling Shinjuku district, their time in Japan was divided between morning songwriting sessions and afternoons or evenings taking in the sensory overload of the biggest city in the world – food, bars, riding Mario Kart style buggies through the streets – members constantly woke with heads full of inspiration. Likewise, inhabiting a quiet house on a private bay out on San Juan unlocked other elements of invention. Weirdly, Brandon observes, many of the record’s melodic moments emerged from the chaos of the city, while heavier ones came somewhere you’d hear a pin drop.

“I do think this is the heaviest album we’ve ever made,” the frontman goes on. “That could be thematically or in terms of the ‘weight’ of expectation, but mostly it’s that this is as classically ‘metal’ as we’ve ever been in our riffs and guitar parts. The breakdowns hit harder than they ever have. And for me, personally, this is definitely the most I’ve ever screamed on an album.”

Spooling through the 10 tracks of The End Is Not The End, that heaviness isn’t immediately what grabs you. There is a consciousness of dynamics, always using melody to highlight the munch, and listeners will find is real beef in the build ups and bursts of Dead or Break Me’s pendulous crunch. But they’re overshadowed by the absolutely colossal pop hooks of All For You, the glassy delicacy of Wait My Love, I’ll Be Home and the poignantly-strummed Afterglow. Even the smashing self-deconstruction of the aforementioned Ego Death is broken up by a grandstanding chorus. And, at points, swaggering album highlight In The Dark could be mistaken for latter-day Fall Out Boy, before the bells, chimes and a saxophone weight in – harmonised with a truly gorgeous guitar solo.

If there is one moment where they do unequivocally reach for the sledgehammers, mind, it’s in the midst of killer tenth track Children Of Light, featuring Sepultura/Soulfly legend Max Cavalera.

“It started as a joke,” Brandon laughs. “We were writing in Tokyo, talking about how this was ‘some primal, Sepultura-sounding shit’. We decided to lean into it and pay full homage, then we kidded about asking Max to be on it. And it was a joke. There is a version of that song with Porter doing the second verse. But then we wondered what would happen if we actually reached out. Our lawyer knows Max and his wife, so we asked if he would be interested. He came back in like four hours saying he could track it the next day. He even sent a video of him doing the vocals which we hadn’t asked for. It was like, ‘What?!’ We were in the presence of a god. There were ideas for other features on the album, but as soon as Max said yes, he had to stand alone. I don’t think any of our fans would expect him to be on one of our records. And Max’s fans wouldn’t expect it either!”

Embracing the unexpected is a key driving force that keeps Atreyu careering onward. Fulfilling and successful as last year’s 20th anniversary tour for The Curse proved to be – reconnecting the band with guitar-oriented parts of their DNA that had fallen out of focus – there is no use for nostalgia. It’s gratifying to see things change, Brandon says, such as how their shows have become colourful cross-generational gatherings. In Milwaukee a couple of nights before we speak there was a seven-year-old and a couple of 10-year-olds in attendance, along with fans in their 50s and 60s.

Atreyu 2026 could never be described as ‘a band reborn’ because they’ve never gone away. Their long growth and evolution to this point has been key to keeping up creative momentum. Though they haven’t had the commercial success of old peers Avenged Sevenfold, they live comfortably enough that there is no frustration. They feel no fear of alienating a casual fanbase: the billions of potential new fans out there is better than the few existing ones who might walk away.

“Our career trajectory has sort of been a bit of a blessing,” Brandon smiles. “We came from the hardcore scene so there was never any thought of, ‘Let’s be the next Metallica!’ It was more just, ‘Let’s go on tour!’ Ascending slowly has left us with so much still to accomplish, so many places we’ve never been and things we’ve never done. The hunger is still there. If you’ve been a band for two years and you blow up to playing arenas [it can create its own problems].

“How do you stay hungry when your plate is full? We’re still fighting for this. And now more than ever we love it. We’re a real band of friends who went to school together. We love hanging out. We love being in the studio. We love travelling together. And it’s interwoven with our families where our wives and kids are around. Having that feeling within keeps you going. So does the outlook that there are still those taller mountains left to climb. We’ve played arenas. Now we want to headline them. We’ve done festivals. Let’s headline those, too. We’ve had the Top 5 rock song. We want Number One!”

Maturity, stability and undimmed excitement should guarantee that Atreyu will go on for years yet, but, ultimately, time waits for no band. So when does Brandon think they’ll really call it a day?

“When our backs and our knees won’t let us do this any more,” he shrugs farewell, with the air of a stoic who doesn’t worry about such eventualities. “And even when that day does come, the music will live on forever. Not to be too flippy-dippy about it but the reality is the world – the universe – is a vast place and we are but a blip on the script. I am confident to say that we have put enough out into the world to make our mark and we will be remembered for some time. For now, we have a lot of gas in the tank. And when we’re done, there will be plenty of Atreyu left to hang on to!”

The End Is Not The End is out now via Spinefarm.

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