IT ALREADY IS TOO LATE, ATREYU; YOU’VE DESTROYED IT ALL

So. Atreyu have a new album, Congregation of the Damned, coming out October 27, and the band has made it perfectly clear that they intend for said album to be a return to form after the lackluster results of their sell-out arena rock effort, Lead Sails and a Who Gives a Fuck? Now they’ve debuted a new song, “Stop! Before It’s Too Late and We’ve Destroyed it All,” on their MySpace. Are we convinced that the Atreyu of yore are about to make a return? Can any band that’s not Faith No More get away with having a exclamation point in a song title? Do we even care?

Well, one thing in the band’s favor: there’s a bare minimum of auto-tune here, which is to say, someone seems to have told drummer/co-“vocalist” (I use that term loosely) Brandon Saller to keep his fucking mouth shut. And besides the somewhat slicker production, the song does sound more or less like it could have been on The Curse.

But, um, who gives a shit, really? While Atreyu were off playing with themselves, writing power ballads and semi-rap songs and ruining FNM classics, their peers have all moved on by either a) going through some kind of musical evolution, b) breaking up, or c) resigning themselves to playing incredibly small venues until the inevitable Metalcore Nostalgia Tour of 2015. If Lead Sails alienated a large portion of Atreyu’s fan base, I’m not convinced that now releasing The Curse 2009 will really lure anyone back. It already seems like A Deathgrip on Yesterday was a million years ago; Hot Topic kids have short memory spans, and have probably moved onto Whitechapel or whatever by now.

Of course, I could be wrong. The band’s upcoming tour with Hollywood Undead could put Atreyu in front of exactly the kind of future McDonald’s employees that they need to make Damned a big seller. But I don’t know anyone who’s excited about Damned, and I don’t think this song will do much to change anyone’s mind.

-AR