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Interview

Interview With Dan Jacobs From Atreyu

Band Photo: Atreyu (?)

The original plan at this year’s Warped Tour was to interview Avenged Sevenfold. However, I found out at the last minute that A7x weren’t doing any press for the day. Instead, I did an interview with Atreyu guitarist Dan Jacobs. I only had 15 minutes and had to take turns with Debbie from Popyoularity.com but I managed to squeeze in the following questions:

darkstar: How’s the Warped Tour going?

Dan: It’s going really good. It’s our first year doing it. I’ve never been to this before. All I could ask for is more.

darkstar: What do you do when the other bands are on stage?

Dan: Sometimes watch, sometimes just walk around, or get on the bus and just relax.

darkstar: What’s next after the Warped Tour?

Dan: We’re taking, like, 6 months off. Gonna write and record a new record. Hopefully have it out in, like, March.

darkstar: What does your name Atreyu mean?

Dan: There’s really not much of a meaning behind it. It’s a name we got from The Never-Ending Story. Our buddy Scott Lloyd helps out with us and he’s kinda hanging around and threw that name out.

darkstar: How’s your latest album, The Curse, doing?

Dan: It’s been doing pretty good. I guess it’s not that new. It’s doing really good. I didn’t know what to expect and it surpassed all our expectations, I guess.

darkstar: What were your influences and inspirations when writing The Curse?

Dan: For me, I’m a really big 80’s rock fan. [Points to the Whitesnake shirt he was wearing.] I love all that stuff and I think that one generation where music was done right and I tried to apply that as much as possible to our music.

darkstar: What made you guys decide to cover Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name”?

Dan: We recorded The Curse and then we’re like, “Oh crap, we need to cover something as a special edition thing.” So we went to another guy Bo. He recorded our Bon Jovi cover for a limited edition for Best Buy only. A special edition thing.

darkstar: Atreyu has some really melodic songs and riffs. Are you guys influenced by Gothenburg metal at all?

Dan: Yeah. I love Arch Enemy. I love In Flames, Soilwork, all those bands. They’re modern day bands that are keeping the shredding around and stuff like that. I mean, a lot of people don’t know about them much. Moreso nowadays because of newer audiences and stuff. But, I mean, that’s where a lot of bands now are getting all their influences from. All the Gothenburg bands.

darkstar: I heard you guys had a slot on Ozzfest but ended up on the Warped Tour instead. Is that true?

Dan: No. We did Ozzfest last year. It was kind of the other way around. We had a slot on Warped Tour last year for like two weeks and it was going to be side stage thing. I don’t know, something like that. But we’re like, “You know what? We’d rather do all of Ozzfest.” We did that and this year we did all of Warped Tour.

darkstar: What’s your favourite Atreyu song?

Dan: I don’t know. I guess I don’t have any favourites. I really like “Right Side of the Bed” or “Remembrance Ballad” or “Bleeding Mascara.” Those are probably my top three favourite songs by Atreyu.

darkstar: Do you have a reason why?

Dan: They’re fun to play. I don’t know. Get to kind of mess around and have fun with it and stuff.

darkstar: What’s in your cd player right now?

Dan: I don’t really use a cd player. I have the whole iPod going on. If I had one, I’d probably be listening to Ratt.

darkstar: Anything to say to the readers?

Dan: Thank you to the readers who supported us, come to our shows, like our music. We wouldn’t be here without you so thank you.