Interview: Atreyu's Dan Jacobs Discusses Upcoming When We Were Young Set, 'The Curse' at Twenty Years

Atreyu has made a name for themselves over the past two decades with a ferocious yet melodic brand of metalcore and hard rock that has won them fans worldwide. At this year’s When We Were Young the band will be one of the closing acts on the Verizon stage, where they will be performing their heavier-than-thou sophomore breakthrough album, The Curse, from start to finish.

Ahead of the show, we spoke with Atreyu guitarist Dan Jacobs about the legacy of The Curse, the pressure that comes with making a sophomore record, the lost demos for the album, and who he’s looking forward to seeing most this year. Please note that sections of this interview have been edited solely for the purposes of the length and clarity.

Main Photo: Dan Jacobs of Atreyu performing in Mountain View, CA // Main Photo Credit: Jared Stossel for Shameless SF

You’ll be playing The Curse from front to back at this year’s When We Were Young Festival. The Curse came out in June 2004, which means that it is twenty years old. You guys have like nine studio albums now, and you’ve been going since 2002. Given the age of the album, how does it feel to look back on the material twenty years later, and see that there is still a hunger for the songs on this record?



It’s strange, in a cool way. I remember doing an interview in the studio when we were recording that record. Somebody asked me, “where do you guys see yourself in five years?” At the time, that seemed so far away. You know? Five years! Like, hopefully, we’d still be doing this, who knows? It’s even more wild to be twenty years deep, just on this record alone, look back and think about everything we’ve been through and everything that it’s taken us to stay where we are and keep doing what we love. Especially now. 



We’ve been around as human beings, as well as musicians, long enough now where you’ve gotten to see the times change. Things come back around again. Right now, I’m seeing a lot of people in their teens and early twenties, stylistically, dressing like they’re straight out of the nineties. That’s exactly how me and my friends dressed in the nineties, and they’ve really nailed it, which is impressive! It’s not some half-assed version. I feel like I’ve gone back in time or something. It’s cool just seeing everything come back around again, with metal and rock getting under the limelight again.

For us to be able to play this record and have an excitement around it that we truly haven’t felt since we put it out is exciting. It’s exciting to play this again.



I hadn’t listened to this album in a minute, and I put it on yesterday. There’s no way that you can start a set with a song like “Bleeding Mascara” and not get everyone’s attention within earshot of your stage. This album is very in-your-face. It felt like you guys really had something to say and a statement to make coming off of an album like Suicide Notes and and Butterfly Kisses, meeting that pressure that comes with having a sophomore record.

I think for us, and even when we were doing Suicide Notes, it was our first true full length record on a true record label. We had no idea what we were doing, other than just doing what we were doing, and trying to document that one way or another. That whole experience and process of writing and recording [Suicide Notes], as well as then touring on it and being around other touring bands, it helped us learn how everything worked and we learned a little bit more about ourselves as musicians and performers. We went, “okay, we’ve learned a lot in the last couple years, it’s time to write and record our next record”, we were very confident that we could do something better. We thought “we know what to do now to make this even bigger and cooler than it was before.” 



I feel like you can really hear that on [The Curse]. That record was written, demoed, and recorded in the order that it is on the album. Everything you hear is exactly how the demo was, other than the bridge of “Five Vicodins Chased With A Shot of Clarity”, which is the last song on the record; we messed with that a little bit.



I wish I knew where they went. The demos of The Curse are better than the actual record. The recording of the actual album sounds cleaner and nicer, but the feel of the demos was genuinely better. I don’t feel like that was even captured on the record. I know that some people who are big fans might think, “What do you mean? That records perfect!” But oh man, I wish you could hear it. There is a better vibe to it. Sophomore records are a scary time, but we knew what to do at that time. It was meant to be.

If you ever find the demos, do you think there’s a chance you’ll do a re-release of The Curse with those attached to it? A lot of bands have been putting out deluxe re-releases of their most popular records, and they usually add a disc with all of the original demos. Is that ever on the table?



Yeah, I mean we haven’t even tried looking for it. I don’t even remember the guy’s name who did it. He was a friend of a friend that did it at his house. We threw it together over there and turned that into our producer and said, “What do you think?” It was that kinda thing. But yeah, man. I want to say that our old manager, Tim Smith - who is more famous now for breaking Skrillex and working with him for most of his career, along with Zedd - might have something. 



When we were writing that record, most of the music was being done by Brandon and myself. I remember us being in my Dad’s garage, writing and showing Tim “Bleeding Mascara” for the first time, and he was videotaping us. The whole video is us jamming this, and him going “Oh my god! Oh shit! This is sick!” I might hit him up and see if he might have that somewhere. I mean, that is absolute gold if he has that video somewhere.

Maybe when we post this, someone will know where the demos are. Who knows? The world works in mysterious ways.

Yeah, that’d be great, we’ll take it!

The concept of the festival this year has bands playing albums from start to finish, which means rehearsals to revisit older material that hasn’t been played. Is there any song from The Curse that has surprised you in a good or even a bad way upon revisiting it all these years later? Were there any that caused more of a challenge when trying to relearn it as a band? What surprised you most?

Hmm, I don’t know. There’s certain riffs and stuff like that. When we did the ten-year anniversary tour for The Curse, some of these songs had never really even been played live before. Back in the day, we’d play “Bleeding Mascara”, “The Crimson”, “Right Side of The Bed”, the main singles. Mostly, we’d be playing the front half of the record. I think that “Demonology and Heartache” and “Corseting” were really the only ones on the back half that we’d get to, but the rest of the songs I don’t remember being played live very much.

The only times we were ever really playing them were when we were writing and recording them in the studio twenty years ago. To try to remember how to play some of them was a bit of a challenge sometimes. Some of it can be hard to break apart when you’re listening to it, as you’re trying to figure out whose doing what harmony or exactly what notes are being played. I have to remind myself what kind of level of players we were at the time and that nothing is as complicated as I would have thoughtfully come up with. You go to play some of those riffs and you go, “Ah, these things are so hard, what was this?” And then you remember, oh - whatever you were playing twenty years ago was not that complicated. And then once you figure out what it is, you’re like “oh, that was a lot easier than I thought.”

I remember hearing a Metallica interview where they talked about how sometimes even they would forget how to play some of their older material, so they would end up going on YouTube to find how somebody played a solo or a riff. But yeah, you have to remember what kind of player you were and are. 



At first, I got lazy about it - when we were doing this ten years ago, and I was going, “Man, I can’t remember how to play all this stuff,” I went on YouTube and thought that there’s gotta be somebody on here playing this or that solo. For whatever reason, our band is one of the hardest bands to cover and nail them. I’ve never seen a recording of anyone playing any one of my solos one hundred percent; there’s always something weird about it. 



Isn’t it so weird that you can spend years playing a song over and over again, and then if you stop playing it for even a year, you completely forget how to play it? Like how the muscle memory leaves your mind the instant that you’ve done it?

It’s a strange thing! If you’re not having it on the brain all the time…it’s like your brain can only retain so many things at any given time. So you gotta eliminate something to get something. For whatever reason that week, it’s like “oh, my thing is that I wanna eat sushi all day long or learn how to roll a spicy tuna roll”. (laughs)

You have some incredible records in your discography. Why play The Curse over any other?


In all honesty, the festival came to us! They asked in particular to play The Curse. We went, “huh, we’ve never had anyone ask us to do that before.” A good amount of the bands [at this festival] are from our era, and some of their most notable records are from that time, so they were kind of digging into that time period to scratch that nostalgic itch.

For us, with The Curse being twenty years old right now, it’s the perfect time for us to bring that back to life, knock the dust off of it, and have some fun with it. That was the catalyst of it all.

When We Were Young is essentially a larger-scale version of Warped Tour, with all of the bands that fans of this music grew up loving, coming together in one place. Given that it’s a “family reunion” of sorts, are there any sets you’re most looking forward to checking out during the day?


Some of their are friends, and some of them are bands that I have yet to meet! I love Saves The Day, they’re playing Stay What You Are, which is fantastic. I do wish they were playing Through Being Cool because I love that record. Stay What You Are is fucking incredible; I absolutely love that record. But I think when I first heard them was when they did Through Being Cool. 

I love Story of the Year; those dudes as human beings are absolutely fantastic, and we get along really well with them. We have such respect for how fucking talented they are and how great of performers they are. Their new album is fantastic, it’s so fucking good. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to listen to it.

I have. It’s so good. 



So good! It could have come out twenty years ago and just hit. It’s wild for them to put an album out this deep into their career that is that fucking good. My Chem[ical Romance], I mean it’s going to be so sick to see them do The Black Parade. I remember when that record came out, and those are dudes that we knew before they popped, as they say. There’s so many bands on here.

There’s The Used, we’ve been friends with them forever, for about twenty years now. Their new guitar player, Joey Bradford, used to play in a band with our singer, Brandon [Saller], called Hell or Highwater. When we did our ten-year anniversary of The Curse, Joey played guitar with us because our other guitarist, Travis [Miguel] was unable to perform with at the time. It’s almost like a big high school reunion. Honestly, I actually look forward to hanging with people more than actually watching the show. For me, that’s kinda the most enjoyable part. 

There’s so many wonderful people in all of these bands, and it’s such a special time.

Atreyu will play at 9:55 PM on the Verizon Stage at this year’s When We Were Young Festival on Saturday, October 19th and Sunday, October 20th. For more information on the festival, click here. To stay updated on new music and shows from Atreyu, click here.