Whether you're a fan of Atreyu or not, it's hard to say that the band's first three albums didn't have their moment in the sun when it came to early 2000s metalcore. I haven't really kept up with the band since 2007's Lead Sails And Paper Anchors, so it's tough to pass judgement on anything past that. That being said, Atreyu was one of the first "screaming" bands I got into as a teen, and for that I have to thank Alex Varkatzas.
So what does Varkatzas think of the genre he helped spawn way back when? He's into some of it, he says to Banger TV, but isn't much of a fan of your clean vocals.
“Since our break, the way that metalcore, or like what us and Killswitch and some of these bands were doing, the way it’s evolved, it’s got really whiny. The melodic vocals are super-fucking whiny and annoying in a lot of bands and I don’t like that shit. I think that’s a shitty direction. I like a Killswitch Engage vocal, like Jesse or Howard‘s. You can sing and have clean vocals, and make it really fucking powerful.”
“The first couple of [Atreyu] records, that was a hundred percent aggression, ‘Suicide Notes‘ and then ‘The Curse‘ was very aggressive. On ‘Death-Grip‘, I started to do a little bit of melody, but not really singing. And then, like, when you go to a major label, dude, straight up, you try to get your record done, and they’re, like, ‘We need to do this. We need to do that. You’ve gotta change this. You’ve gotta do that.’ And you have to try to get your record done no matter what.
Now we’re at a point where I just get to be me and do what I want, and what I wanna do is be aggressive and emotional, but I don’t wanna be emotional in a weak way; I wanna be emotional in an aggressive, passionate way.
And for me, that’s screaming and yelling and emoting myself not in a singing, melodic way. I don’t wanna do that shit anymore.”
Varkatzas says he did sing a bit on Lead Sails, and thinks that at that point he kind of "lost his way" as a vocalist. I'd say Varkatzas is pretty dead on with his assertion that clean vocals are kind of whiny now, if only because all of a sudden everyone thinks they can sing in some capacity. Even if you can hit the notes, you voice might just not be suited for heavier music and doesn't have the power to cut through… or you're just reliant on studio magic, which unfortunately cannot fix nasally and annoying.
