Hard Rock Hell Radio host of The Rule Breakers Show, Charlotte, spoke with Porter from Atreyu about their return to Donington, their most recent album The Beautiful Dark and their Summer schedule of festivals!
Charlotte: Welcome back to Donington! You’re playing the avalanche stage later today. How does it feel to be back at Download?
Porter: Genuinely, it’s an honor. These are some of the best festivals we’ve ever played in our entire career, so we’ll always play when asked. It’s a true joy, and I’m not just saying, like that’s a cliche answer, I think, but genuinely, the moment we heard we were playing this, our whole band was like, yeah, all right, let’s go. I mean, they all have merit, of course, but it’s just something special about download.
C: And you add some surprises to your live shows occasionally. I know that there was a saxophone sing along not too long ago. Can we expect any surprises from today’s show?
P: There’s always a surprise in every show, even to us. That’s part of the fun of it is like, it’s a very symbiotic thing, us and the crowd, and so sometimes antics happen on stage that we just like, what are you doing? And we joke about it and then something happens in the crowd and we feed off of that. And it’s just, the whole point of this thing for me is for us is to connect and make the best day we could possibly have for these people that showed up So, yeah, we’ll see. I mean, we’ll have a 30 minutes set. So festivals are a bit tough. You come and see us in a headliner with no curfew, and it’s going to get even weirder, but, yeah, but we got some fun stuff planned. Yeah.
C: Because you guys were back here in 2016? I think that your last Download?
P: Yeah, I think so, yeah, it’s been a while!
C: Talk me through your schedule for the next couple of months.
P: Yeah, we started this with rock and ring, rock and park. Also very highly respected festivals in Germany, which once again, an honor to play them, too. And I live in Germany and speak German, so that’s a whole nother fun experience. So then we did a couple headlining shows and Germany. We did one in the Netherlands. We played Southampton last night, which was delightful. The Engine Rooms shout out, and then, we do this. We’re in France tomorrow and then Luxembourg, and then we just keep going for till the end of this month. We got fests all around connected with some headlining shows with Lowlives, so that’s some good buds there.
C: And you’re playing a festival in Las Vegas as well towards the end of this summer?
P: We are, When We Were Young Fest. Which we played the first one, this is now the third one and we’re doing actually one of our albums called The Curse in full, so that’s cool. And then we’re doing a warm up show in Anaheim, California, with that too at the House of Blues. I mean, we have this tour and then we have a couple flight dates and then even that, When We Were Young stuff like, we’ll go out and rehearse for a week before, but it’s not like full, proper tours. This is the only proper tour we’ve done this year.
C: You released your latest album, the Beautiful Dark, in December, which is your 9th studio album. So that includes music from three EP’s that were previously released.
P: Yes.
C: Can you give me a little bit of background in terms of the construction and the making of the album?
P: Yeah. So each EP is its own, path in the journey of a human being in life, and it led to the beautiful dark of life and it’s essentially about enjoying the beautiful times, and it’s enjoying the dark times. There are lessons to be learned and if you view it through the lens of I’m growing from this, it’s all about perspective of this existence, and so it was lyrically, a lot of different things in that album were about that and about how to challenge yourself, conquer your demons, and come out the other side and be the best version you could possibly be. The decision making behind the actual physical release of the artwork, we hired this company called Morning Breath, and they had illustrated lead sales for us and in our wake for us as well, and it’s essentially I art direct almost all of our art, especially the albums and stuff, and I make a lot of videos for us. So it was, a lot of the symbolism and the actual symbols as well, were a brainchild of mine. So I just communicated with Doug, the illustrator, and was like, this is what I want, this is what we want, and Brandon has a good hand in that too. We all just wanted something that was heavily tattoo-able, which has been proven true. We’ve seen a lot of tattoos of the symbol for drowning or the symbol for whatever, so it’s just a beautiful thing.
C: Do you have any there any highlight tracks?
P: Yes. Respect. Thank you for the blessing.
C: Are there any specific tracks from this album that you’re looking forward to performing later today?
P: There’s two songs I’m looking forward to. Drowning is the first song we released off of that last album, and it goes hard every time. I remember we played it right after it was released on the Bullet For My Valentine tour, and it was like, we’ve never in our entire career had a fresh song go off like that. Truly, the fans were making up their own chants and clapping in their own ways, and it was just fucking mad. So that song is just very fun to play. And there’s a song called Battle Drums that we did with an artist named Kazo that I actually put down the bass and just run around like an imbecile on the mic for a bit, and it’s just fun for me. It’s a whole change of pace, so I always look forward to that.
C: So we’ve touched on some appearances over the next couple of months, what else can we look forward to for 2024?
P: Pretty much just fests is all I can talk about. But we do have a lot of things cooking up behind the scenes, a lot of things that will be announced either at the end of the year or the beginning of next. And we have some music and stuff, but that’s all I can say is as vague as I can say. So keep a lookout, the label would kill me.
C: Well, the very best of luck with your summer appearances.
P: Thank you!
