The metalcore genre has existed for around 3 decades now, and while there’s plenty of debate on who the first metalcore band was, California’s Atreyu certainly are one of the more important bands of the genre. In a recent interview with Rock Sound, vocalist Alex Varkatzas discussed their new album In Our Wake.
Speaking to Rock Sound about where Atreyu fits in 2018, Alex said:
WHO DO YOU FEEL ATREYU ACTUALLY ARE IN 2018? WHAT DO YOU FEEL THAT REPRESENT WITHIN THE SCENE IN THE MODERN DAY?
“You know I don’t know where we fit in any scene and I don’t think that any scene knows where we fit. I think that’s just part of us. This is going to sound a little cocky but I’m a singer in a band. I don’t think we fit into any genre. I think we are hard to pin down. When we first started it was a little easier. We were a metallic hardcore band with singing parts. There wasn’t any else like that when we were doing it. People get confused and say ‘you’re a metalcore band’, but we invented metalcore. That may sound cocky but I don’t care. We pre-date Poison The Well and Killswitch Engage and all those bands. I’ve been doing this since I was literally 12 years old. So throughout that I still don’t know where we fit, and I think our fans know that. This is the place to be you. This is our driving force and heartbeat. This is the place we go to express ourselves. I think our fan base and the people who like our band are like that too. They like music and we play music.”
Very enlightening, in our opinion. Certainly, bands like Integrity, Earth Crisis, Deadguy, and Eighteen Visions were helping to establish the genre early on. What Alex said isn’t terribly far off, though. While there’s been plenty of other releases in the genre that predated what Atreyu was doing even before the band existed, it’s certainly fair to say Atreyu have played a major part in the commercial success of the genre, especially in the 2000’s. This is, after all, a band that’s sold hundreds of thousands of records and has a devoted fanbase.
What say you?
