Craft Recordings will reissue ATREYU's "A Death-Grip On Yesterday" on vinyl on October 30, twenty years after the album pushed the Californian metalcore band into the mainstream. Pre-orders are open now.
Released in March 2006, "A Death-Grip On Yesterday" was the record where ATREYU stopped hedging. It debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard 200 — their first Top 10 — on the strength of bigger hooks and an arena-scale ambition the band had only hinted at before. "Ex's And Oh's" became the crossover, reaching No. 24 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Airplay chart and then leaking into places metalcore songs did not usually reach: "Madden NFL 07," "Guitar Hero II" and, years later, MTV's "Jersey Shore."
The reissue comes on standard black vinyl plus two limited colourways — Fire Smoke through Craft Recordings and Blazing Yellow through Revolver. Alongside it, the band have finally put "Her Portrait In Black" on digital platforms. Written during the "A Death-Grip On Yesterday" sessions but left off the album, it surfaced instead on the soundtrack to the 2006 film "Underworld: Evolution," and has been awkward to find legally ever since.
ATREYU formed in Yorba Linda, California in 1998, taking their name from the hero of Michael Ende's "The Neverending Story." Two EPs — 1998's "Visions" and 2001's "Fractures In The Facade Of Your Porcelain Beauty" — earned them a Victory Records deal, and 2002's "Suicide Notes And Butterfly Kisses" put them at the front of the early-2000s metalcore surge. 2004's "The Curse" went gold, hit No. 1 on Billboard's Independent Albums chart and produced "Right Side Of The Bed" and "Bleeding Mascara."
The band went into the studio in 2005 with co-producer Josh Abraham (SLAYER, ALKALINE TRIO) in a lineup of vocalist Alex Varkatzas, guitarists Dan Jacobs and Travis Miguel, bassist/vocalist Marc McKnight and drummer/vocalist Brandon Saller. Saller later described the nine-song result as "the first album we made where we took fearless leaps into the unknown" — the melodic reach of "The Theft" and "Ex's And Oh's" balanced against "Creature" and "Our Sick Story (Thus Far)," which stayed closer to what the band had been.
What followed was the "Taste Of Chaos" tour alongside DEFTONES and THRICE, then Ozzfest 2006, then a move to Hollywood Records for 2007's "Lead Sails Paper Anchor."
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