Once upon a time, there was a band called Atreyu. They were a good band, making three exciting albums of emo-tinged metalcore, a pretty damn good foray into radio rock territories and a final death rattle to their days of winged eyeliner that isn’t that bad. Then for some reason, they all decided to repeatedly smash themselves in the head with hammers before every new recording they made and produced some of the most ridiculously boring, lifeless music around. A parade of baffling and creatively defunct choices blight the last decade of Atreyu’s career, ranging from tracks that Imagine Dragons would bin for being too trite to the conceptual abortion that was their 3 EP experience last year. Rarely has a band not only fell so far from grace, but continued to dig further once they cratered into the depths of the abyss, seemingly ignoring their own bloodied fingernails and CTE from the impact. There was no need for this album. At all. The world has more need for another Fast And The Furious movie than it does an album of Atreyu reimagining some of their classic tracks and assorted – hardly inspiring stuff.
You would think that despite what they’ve done, the original bones of the songs remain intact. No. The bones have been obliterated and been swept away into the aether. The words “fucking” and “dreadful” don’t do them justice, such is the stunning lack of quality on show here. Not only do these tracks not need anything doing to them, but making them into weird semi-acoustic versions of themselves that a 16 year old with his first guitar wouldn’t dare make is an insult to the past version of the band. The swagger, the charm of the old tracks (‘Ex’s and Oh’s’ and ‘Right Side of the Bed’ in particular) has been erased entirely. In their place is something pitiful, something so self loathing that it gives you genuine concern for the band’s mental well-being. Becoming The Bull, previously a staunch, self reflective anthem now sounds like someone told ChatGPT to have The Chainsmokers create a NFL anthem. Why was The Theft, originally a weighted, emotional ballad about stolen youth and lost innocence turned into a rejected John Lewis Christmas advert song? A lot of the lines from the song actually describe this whole situation very well though, in particular “rip them out, take them, burn to coals as they crush and leave nothing, that resembles a soul of a man” and this whole experience does indeed leave nothing but crushing numbness.
All of this before the band further demolish their legacy with covers. Both songs, a cover of ‘Mary Jane’s Last Dance’ by Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers and ‘Like A Stone’ by Audioslave are so fist-clenchingly awful that even Wes Scanlon would think that he could do a better job. If there is an afterlife then you can guarantee both Tom Petty and Chris Cornell are waiting for the band to arrive and give them the Doom Guy treatment.
It begs the question, what’s the point anymore? Such a creatively bereft release leaves bewilderment that the band not only thought this was a good idea, but that people would want it. It even taints the experience of listening to the original, much better, versions, akin to finding out that your childhood best friend now robs hospices to get by. It’s impossible as a fan of the band to listen to these and not get furious. Hell, if you’re a fan of rock music you’ll probably snap a tooth due to gritting them so hard. There isn’t even the usual benefit to this horrendous fistula of an album of it ending, because in the back of your mind you’ll still know it exists and it will creep up on you like the black dog.
This is one of the worst albums that 2024 has produced and then some; it’s a waste of time for everyone involved, from the engineers to anyone unfortunate enough to hear a single note. Atreyu, if you’re reading this, hang your heads in shame. Meritless. Pointless. A collection of songs so depressing that they’ve left a cloud over the originals that may never fade. It gets a solitary mark on the premise that it does elicit emotion, unfortunately that emotion is a rage so compounding that it may form a series of ulcers.