In a moment that has lived on in metalcore infamy, former Atreyu frontman Alex Varkatzas boasted back in 2018 that his aforementioned band had essentially invented the genre of metalcore. Speaking to Rock Sound at the time, Varkatzas controversially claimed:
“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.”
Atreyu, who formed back in 1998, of course didn’t invent metalcore by any means, with the likes of Integrity, Starkweather, Starkweather, Overcast, Deadguy and more helping to pioneer and crystalize the genre in the early to mid 90s.
Several years later in 2023, Varkatzas went on to walk back his claims regarding Atreyu being a metalcore pioneer, writing off his past proclamation as a PR stunt. In a conversation with the Talk Toomey Podcast, Varkatzas went on to explain:
“I say stupid shit sometimes. Like I said I invented metalcore once. You can call me out on that if you want, it’s fine.”
“My thoughts on it are like, we rode on the backs of other bands that we liked at the same time. There were bands that were coming up doing the same thing. And at that time, I think that screaming and singing together was like kinda that bridge that made it a little different. But no, I mean, I didn’t invent anything. I also didn’t invent chopping the water when you have a new record coming out.
Like most people I think who know me, know that me saying that ‘I invented metalcore’ is fucking ridiculous. Because I don’t care. Metalcore wasn’t even a coined term when bands like Lamb Of God and all that… They were calling it like the ‘new wave of American heavy metal ‘— ’cause that sounds way cooler, right?
I’m chopping the water, trying to make business for… You know at the time Atreyu wasn’t exactly killing it. So, you got a new record coming out, you gotta get a little resourceful.
I learned from that to not try to play the heel, to not be disingenuous to myself, and that’s the major lesson. I kinda deserve whatever lumps or anything anybody wanted to say about it, because it was like a callous thing. But at the same time I think that people that know me, know that that was bullshit. And people who don’t know me are more than happy to throw stones anyway.
So it’s kinda like it is what it is. I gave some people some ammo for years to come in the bottom of messageboards and stuff. What’s life without a little chopping the water, you know what I mean? I learned from it.”
Now, in a new interview with Metal Hammer, Atreyu, who are currently out celebrating 20 plus years of their gold-certified sophomore album “The Curse“, looked back on their contributions to the metalcore genre.
While the band’s drummer/vocalist turned frontman Brandon Saller didn’t share the same sentiment as his above-mentioned former bandmate, he does still see Atreyu‘s impact on what metalcore has become as being notable. Speaking of band’s early 2000s rise, he shared:
“We were definitely part of this era where hardcore metal, metalcore or whatever you want to call it became more commercially successful. If you look at what’s extreme and gnarly now, Atreyu is pretty tame. But at the time people would be like, ‘I cannot believe this band is on the radio right now. What is the world coming to?’”
Reflecting later on what the scene has evolved into since, he offered:
“I can confidently say that we had a part in that. Bands like us and Killswitch from that earlier era, then not much later the Triviums, the Bullets. There’s so many bands that had a huge hand in shaping what today’s metal is, and we’re humbled to even have our thumbprint in that DNA.
I meet younger people in bands and I’m never sure if they’re going to care. But then I meet people like the drummer of Knocked Loose [Kevin ‘Pacsun’ Kaine]. He’s like, ‘I love Atreyu, I’ve been an Atreyu fan since I was in high school!'”
