Review Summary: no one cares no one listens screaming words that you fake hearing
I'd like to think that 2009 is a lifetime ago. That was the year when
Atreyu released
The Congregation of the Damned, a tepidly-received 'return to form' for the band after it became the bull two years earlier. Not that Atreyu had all that much metal cred to begin with, but going Disney on 2007's
Lead Sails Paper Anchor seemed to rub even the lowest of the lowest common denominator mall metal posers (with which, based on my 5,000+ Atreyu plays, I fancy myself firmly entrenched) the wrong way. None of this really mattered in retrospect, because it's pretty clear to me that being without Atreyu for six or so years bummed me out.
I'd also like to think that I'm different in 2015, but I'm not. I found Atreyu some thirteen years ago, when I was watching
Uranium on Fuse (
aside: do u guys remember that show at all? https://youtu.be/s8jzZq9SKRU or https://youtu.be/UG0dlIABoGg) in the tiny apartment I grew up in. In the years since, despite constantly falling in and out of love with metal (and metalcore, specifically) as well as tons of other genres, I still found myself unable to restrain the grin that crept across my face only a few measures into the first verse of the first song on
Long Live-- right when Alex's velociraptor screams take off and drive towards a soaring Brandon chorus. Hearing Dan and Brandon shredding again. And Marc... well, you still can't really hear the bass but hey, that's part of the band's charm, right?
To say an Atreyu record has a formula is to say... well something entirely obvious and not very helpful at all. If you have an issue with this, you probably realized it a few albums ago and aren't reading this review anymore. If you buy into the scream-verse-sing-chorus lifestyle, then I got good news for you: Atreyu are baaaaaaaaaaaaaack.
Long Live is the band's sixth LP and it picks up, for the most part, where the last three (
Deathgrip through
Congreation) left off. It's a very fun metal record with songs that have titles like "I Would Kill / Lie / Die (For You)" and "Heartbeats and Flatlines" - songs that you can tell are Atreyu songs before you even hear them.
If you're looking for a dissection of Atreyu's style (within the universe of other Atreyu records), then (a) we would be great friends; but (b) I'm not going to get too deep into that here. An Atreyu record is still very much about the
feel, and this definitely feels like it's one of their own. Any of these songs could easily fit in alongside the material they have put out since 2006. I can literally go track-by-track and point this stuff out: the aforementioned "Heartbeats..." unmistakably channels "Ex's and Oh's" within the first few bars; "Brass Balls" kinda plays like a mix between "Insatiable" and the Volbeat cover from 2010; hell, even "Revival" the bizarre (but welcome) acoustic interlude plays like the vastly underrated pirate-anthem that was the
LSPA title track. I'll spare you the rest, but it's a wonderful feeling.
I guess if I was going to single out tracks to avoid, I'd say skip "Do You Know Who You Are?" because there's some weird, lame like... rapping?... also maybe "I Would Kill…", because it's so laughable lyrically (yes, even for Atreyu). Or actually don't skip anything. You make the call. Fucking blow those fucking words out the back of your head.
