ATREYU's BRANDON SALLER On Upcoming Album: 'We Just Want To Go Back To Fast And Heavy'

Brandon Saller, drummer and clean vocalist for reactivated Southern California metallers ATREYU, says that the band is trying to "go back to fast and heavy" material for its upcoming comeback album, explaining that the music that has already been written for the CD is "unapologetically abrasive."

During a brand new interview with Australia's Hysteria, Saller was asked to elaborate on ATREYU singer Alex Varkatzas' recent online post in which Alex said the band's new music would contain "tons of screaming and shredding" in the vein of the material on ATREYU's 2004 album "The Curse", and that it would be "none of that major-label BS."

"For us, there was never a situation of too many cooks in the kitchen when we moved to the major label," Saller said. "We have always been a band that experimented with new sounds and new styles, trying to expand on what we have already done. What Alex is saying with that 'no major-label bullshit' is the new music we've been toying with is unapologetically abrasive. There's nothing very radio about it. There's nothing pop about it."

He continued: "We're trying to get back to where we were when we first started the band; all we wanted to do was fucking destroy a 300-person-capacity club. We just want to go back to fast and heavy.

"We've written and recorded a few songs, and it's coming up awesome, but we are trying to keep our mouths shut on this."

Saller added: "I'll say this much: it's very heavy, and a punch in the face for heavy metal fans."

ATREYU's first material in six years will be released in 2015 through the Search And Destroy imprint as part of the newly announced joint venture between Raw Power Management and Spinefarm.

In a recent interview with Australia's Music Feeds, Saller stated about how ATREYU decided to get back together and start working on new music again: "I think it was probably six to eight months ago, we kind of just started talking again. It started coming up a year and a half ago, and it just wasn't right. So we started more seriously talking about it and decided that we wanted to dip our toes back in and inch our way back into playing again. It really felt right for all of us and with the state of the music world right now, it felt like a good time to do that."

He continued: "It was funny because a lot of people had speculation and were talking about a lot of stuff with [the celebration of the tenth anniversary of ATREYU's second album] 'The Curse', and I think that a lot people just expected maybe some 'Curse' shows to come up when we first [announced] we were coming back. And that definitely came up, but it was the kind of thing where we just felt like making music again more than anything. So it started as kind of a… The idea for that turned into having more interest in making more music. We started writing again and jamming and went into the studio with Fred Archambault, [whom] I've done stuff with with my band HELL OR HIGHWATER; he's just a great producer and engineer. So we went into the studio and recorded some music, just to see how it felt. So we went from there and announced a couple of shows here in the States. Everything's kind of fallen into place in a pretty special way, so it's a lot of fun right now."