Rough Edge: Interview with Travis Miguel of Atreyu

SURREAL SUCCESS:
An Interview with Travis Miguel of ATREYU

Interview by Ray Van Horn, Jr. - March 2005

There’s something special about the Orange County/So-Cal scene that has become an acknowledged breeding ground for today’s crop of young talent. Bands such as Eighteen Visions, Bleeding Through and Avenged Sevenfold have instantly become household names, while the highly successful Atreyu has proven the theory is no fluke. Already one of the biggest bands in metal right now, Atreyu has been through two albums, countless tours including a coveted Ozzfest slot and a chamber music tribute album dedicated by The String Quartet. Speaking with guitarist Travis Miguel, you’ll find a righteous brother who seemingly hasn’t grown accustomed to the fame his band enjoys. Not a bad thing, needless to say.

RoughEdge.com: Thanks for having me up.

Travis Miguel: No problem.

RoughEdge.com: Well, to begin, I know much of "The Curse" has to do with the darker, lonelier side of immortality, but your use of a vampire as your muse, I think, also serves as muse to exorcise certain demons from a bad relationship, perhaps? A parasitic girl, maybe? “Bleeding Mascara,” “You Eclipsed by Me,” “Demonology and Heartache…” Is there a dual message presented with this album?

Travis Miguel: Not really. People tend to misconstrue this album as being a concept album about vampires, but that’s not the case. Each song is independent of each other. Alex (Varkatazas) uses a couple of vampire references here and there, but for the most part it’s just imagery. It’s more just something to look at, really. It kind of adds a bit of flair, but the whole vampire thing, I think, seems to show that maybe people are looking a little too deep into it, you know? Maybe they’re just distracted by the cover art, I don’t know.

RoughEdge.com: (laughs)

Travis Miguel: But like I said, it’s not a concept album. There’s no big vampirism concept behind it or anything like that. We just thought it would make it a little more interesting.

RoughEdge.com: Cool. Now, from “The Crimson”: “Robert Smith lied, boys do cry, and with blood tears in my eyes I’m an Anne Rice novel come to life.” I think it’s a really nice reference because I think some people, myself included, can relate, having read "Vampire L’estat" with The Cure’s "Pornography" playing in the background, so that line alone hit me right there. Obviously there’s some sort of connection between the two that inspired you guys. What do you feel that might be?

Travis Miguel: You’d have to ask Alex about that, really, because he writes all the lyrics, but yeah, the way he arranges his lyrics and chooses what he says, I think, is extremely clever, and that lyric also stands out in my mind. (laughs) A good majority of our listeners probably don’t even know who Robert Smith is!

RoughEdge.com: (laughs) Sad but true!

Travis Miguel: Or Anne Rice for that matter. But for those who do know who those people are, they get the references and I’m sure it makes it more meaningful for them.

RoughEdge.com: Definitely. I also read where "The Curse" stems from being in a tour van for a long amount of time with dramatic events going down around you guys, and you guys were sort of incapacitated to react from being on the road. So I guess put me in the back of the van and give me a bird’s eye view of what transpired at that point in time.

Travis Miguel: I mean, it’s not referring to any particular moment. It’s just the haunt … we’ve never gone on tour and have it run a hundred percent smooth, especially when we’re in a van. We’ve been through it all as far as the van breaking down or getting incredibly sick on the road, which is just the worst! (laughs) I can attest to that right now! But you know, it’s about losing money, getting a flat tire, losing merch, losing equipment, equipment breaking while onstage, you know, getting screwed over by promoters, stuff like that. For awhile it just seemed we were cursed and a lot of the bands we toured with at the time (laughs), it seemed like our bad luck rubbed off on them! Bloodlet, Sky Came Falling and Drowning Man all broke up shortly after touring with us!

RoughEdge.com: (laughs) Wow!

Travis Miguel: We were on tour with Red Tape and they hit a deer and totaled their van.

RoughEdge.com: (laughs) I don’t mean to laugh …

Travis Miguel: We were on tour with Darkest Hour and they got all of their money stolen. They had personal belongings stolen too while on tour with us.

RoughEdge.com: Jesus.

Travis Miguel: (laughs) So if you’re in a band and you’re considering touring with us, you might want to think twice!

RoughEdge.com: (laughs)

Travis Miguel: But no, it’s just an inside joke amongst us so we can kind of have something to laugh at.

RoughEdge.com: Yeah, that works.

Travis Miguel: Just the misfortunes of being on tour, you know?

RoughEdge.com: I guess it has to be a little bit of a different perspective that you have a bus for this tour. I’m sure you’re a little bit warmer …

Travis Miguel: It does help!

RoughEdge.com: Less hassle with someone else driving, what have you.

Travis Miguel: Exactly, exactly. It does help.

RoughEdge.com: It improves your state of mind a little more maybe?

Travis Miguel: Oh yeah! Morale is really high all the time, you know? If you want to kind of get away, all you have to do is climb into your bunk and just take a nap or watch TV. and since we’re not in such close quarters we’re not as sick as we used to be.

RoughEdge.com: Right

Travis Miguel: I mean, it still happens, but just having this and being privileged to have this makes all the difference in the world. We feel lucky to even be on the road, let alone on a nice bus like this.

RoughEdge.com: Yeah. Now, I’m probably going out on a limb, but I want to compare the use of Brandon (Saller)’s clean vocals, particularly on “The Crimson,” “Right Side of the Bed” or even “Nevada’s Grace,” as having an eighties kitsch to them. Particularly, and I don’t mean it as an insult, but in a Rick Springfield vein.

Travis Miguel: Mmm hmm.

RoughEdge.com: That, to me, seems like one of your differentiating factors.

Travis Miguel: With the singing/screaming thing, it wasn’t a huge drawn-out plan where it was like, ‘Oh, if Brandon started singing then we’ll sell a million records.’ The band started off as more of a straight-ahead hardcore band, just screaming and fast circle-pit parts and mosh breakdowns. So we just decided to add a little something else and Alex, our frontman, he actually tried his hand at singing at first but it wasn’t working out too well! (laughs)

RoughEdge.com: (laughs)

Travis Miguel: Brandon has a loud voice, so we figured we’d have him give a go at it and it worked out great! We’ve been doing it ever since and now Alex is starting to kind of cross over into the more melodic parts too and Brandon’s crossing over into the more harsh vocal parts too. So, we’re constantly changing and we’re constantly evolving. With that being said, everybody thinks were some sort of spooky Goth core band and who knows? Maybe the next album might be dedicated to … (looks down at a sandwich) Salami!

RoughEdge.com: (laughs)

Travis Miguel: I don’t know, man. (laughs) I just think that some people take what we do a little too seriously! I don’t think they get it. I think they’re giving us a little more credit (laughs) than we really deserve! We’re not an intellectual band, we’re not trying to save the world, we’re not trying to reinvent the wheel or anything like that. And even with the whole singing/screaming thing, I’ve done interviews where they say ‘Oh, this is such a new thing and a new concept.’ Like, Fear Factory was doing it in 1991!

RoughEdge.com: Right!

Travis Miguel: And V.O.D. was doing it in ’95, so it’s been around for quite awhile, but I don’t know …

RoughEdge.com: The more accurate statement is that it’s now catching on.

Travis Miguel: Yeah, yeah, finally it’s catching on, which is cool, you know?

RoughEdge.com: But it seems like you’ve attracted part of The Cult of Tori Amos! (laughs)

Travis Miguel: Yeah, sure! Cool! I mean, the melodic part of it attracts more people, even older people. My parents are like, ‘I like it when Brandon sings, but Alex’s screaming is not too pleasant!’

RoughEdge.com: (laughs) That’s too funny!

Travis Miguel: It’s just music and it’s entertainment. People shouldn’t take it too seriously.

RoughEdge.com: It’s just escapism.

Travis Miguel: Basically, yeah. Definitely. This industry’s so political and people get stressed out all the time, you know? There’s arguments, management and all this stuff, and when you think about it, it’s kind of ridiculous because this is rock n’ roll! This is just music, this is entertainment. When you get up onstage and act like idiots, some people can escape from their everyday lives … and I’m not complaining at all, this is what we’ve all dreamed of … but I just stress to everybody to not take it too seriously and enjoy it while you can and have fun with it.

RoughEdge.com: Absolutely. Now, I want to add to that eighties theme. I read a really cool quote by Marc (McKnight) that said: “I’d really love to be in the eighties where I can wear my band’s shirt around. Damn 2000s!”

Travis Miguel: (laughs)

RoughEdge.com: I spent my teens in the eighties, so I can relate to that.

Travis Miguel: Right.

RoughEdge.com: I don’t know if you can speak for Marc or yourself, but what would you expect you might get out of this hypothetical scenario? Let’s say you really are walking around the eighties wearing an Atreyu shirt, aside from people coming up and asking if you dig "The Neverending Story," then what?

Travis Miguel: The whole eighties thing comes from our other guitar player Dan (Jacobs). The five of us are just completely different from each other, you know? I really love left and center music, stuff that they all hate. I love bands like Isis and Neurosis, Mastodon …

RoughEdge.com: Right on!

Travis Miguel: Pelican, Tom Waits, Deftones, stuff like that. Dan loves the cheesy eighties hair metal …

RoughEdge.com: (laughs)

Travis Miguel: Marc and Brandon, they’re really into … well, Brandon’s really into the poppier stuff, bands like Sugarcult, My Chemical Romance, and Alex pretty much likes anything that’s heavy and dark, so I mean, there’s so many different musical tastes and when we mesh it all together, it kind of comes out sounding the way it does, which is what the CD sounds like.

RoughEdge.com: Right.

Travis Miguel: So it works out pretty well.

RoughEdge.com: Okay, cool. Now with "The Curse" and "Suicide Notes and Butterfly Kisses" you’ve found yourself atop the pack in the scene we’re talking about, the metalcore genre or subgenre if you want to call it that.

Travis Miguel: Mmm hmm.

RoughEdge.com: I know I was kind of touching on the clean vocals of Brandon mixed with Alex’s screaming, but what would you pinpoint as your chemical element of success right now?

Travis Miguel: I don’t know, man, it’s hard to say without tooting your own horn. There’s a lot of bands out there right now that sound exactly the same from each other and I’m sure other people lump us into that category, sounding like every other band out there as well. In my own personal opinion I just think the songwriting itself is very strong, you know? It’s music that I think everybody can get into. Some of the songs are heavier than others, some are slower, some are faster, so I think with us it’s just … as cheesy and stupid as it sounds (laughs), there’s something for everybody in there.

RoughEdge.com: That’s cool. Now, you guys come from Orange County and I’ve spoken with a lot of bands from that area and Southern Cal all around …

Travis Miguel: Yeah.

RoughEdge.com: I get the impression that the Orange County scene is a really tight-knit family, much less movement. Collectively you guys have helped bring this type of music to the masses, so tell me what’s so special about the Southern Cal scene in your eyes.

Travis Miguel: I think the fact that … especially Orange County … the scene itself is just so big. There’s so many opportunities for bands, especially younger bands, to get out and play and network with other bands and with other kids putting on shows, where it’s like if you take some poked-up town in America where there’s maybe a venue to play in versus many or a few, there’s not much opportunity for kids. I think that’s where bands like us and bands like Eighteen Visions, Bleeding Through, Throwdown and Avenged Sevenfold, I think what’s helped us move right along is just the fact that the scene is so big. (laughs) To an extent, maybe we were spoiled because we had all those opportunities, but we definitely took advantage of those opportunities. It’s what got us here now.

RoughEdge.com: You all took care of each other.

Travis Miguel: Yeah, we’ve toured with all of those bands and played many shows with them. One of my first shows with Atreyu was us, From Autumn to Ashes and Avenged Sevenfold. It was in some warehouse no bigger than like, if you took this bus and squished it together like this …

RoughEdge.com: (laughs)

Travis Miguel: And the P.A. was basically a microphone plugged into an amplifier …

RoughEdge.com: (laughs)

Travis Miguel: And there were maybe twenty kids tops there. Looking back on it, if you took those three bands and put them on the same bill today …

RoughEdge.com: Yeah.

Travis Miguel: It’d be huge and that’s just astounding to me! I never thought that bands like us would ever get out of California, let alone across the country and across to the Atlantic, so it’s surreal and again I’m not complaining, you know, but it’s definitely surreal.

RoughEdge.com: Sure, no doubt. Now, you guys have been confirmed for Vans Warped this year, right?

Travis Miguel: Yep.

RoughEdge.com: Cool, so you’re no stranger to the outdoor summer festival gig like Ozzfest …

Travis Miguel: Right, right.

RoughEdge.com: So tell me your perspectives of playing Ozzfest. It has to be grueling as hell, but rewarding in the end.

Travis Miguel: Yeah, it is. I mean, the heat is brutal! (laughs) Showers are available every day, but sometimes the water’s not really working too efficiently! (laughs)

RoughEdge.com: (laughs)

Travis Miguel: It’s either way too hot or way too cold, you don’t even bother taking a shower at that point. But you get to play in front of thousands of people every day and a lot of those people, especially this past year because there was … particularly on the second stage … all pretty much underground bands like ourselves, Throwdown, Bleeding Through, God Forbid, Darkest Hour, whereas before Ozzfest kind of only took the major label quote-unquote “nu-metal” bands and stuck them on the second stage and they didn’t really do anything after that, you know? So I think this past summer was good for all of our bands because we were all playing to people that normally wouldn’t have even heard of us, let alone seen us play live or heard our music.

RoughEdge.com: Right.

Travis Miguel: So it was a definite exposure boost for all of our bands. It did nothing but help us. And yeah, it did wear on us after awhile, especially two months, you know, the heat every day … it’s basically the same thing every day and there’s only so many times you can drink a six pack of beer to wash away your boredom!

RoughEdge.com: (laughs)

Travis Miguel: But still, we had a blast and we made a lot of friends on that tour, and we’re definitely looking forward to Vans Warped Tour this year because we’ve never done it and there’s so many good bands playing on it and it just seems like a really cool vibe. We all grew up going to Warped Tour, so it’s definitely an honor to be a part of it.

RoughEdge.com: That’s cool. You’re going to be on the main stage …

Travis Miguel: Yeah.

RoughEdge.com: And you’ll have to get ready for that half hour format. I mean you’ve gotta love that precision clockwork …

Travis Miguel: Yeah, yeah, it was the same thing on Ozzfest, you know, it was boom boom boom. Get your shit onstage, play, get off. Ozzfest was run like a tight ship and there’s a reason for that. Everything went over really smoothly. Everybody had their shit together. I heard Warped Tour is a little bit more laid-back, which is cool as well, you know? You don’t have to stress out and be running around everywhere to get all your stuff into place, but either way, summer festivals are cool because it’s like summer camp for a bunch of band dudes, you know? It’s cool.

RoughEdge.com: (laughs)

Travis Miguel: You meet so many people and you get to play to different people every day and there’s just so much to do all day: go out and watch other bands or check out the other booths and stuff like that, so summer festivals are real cool. It where it’s at.

RoughEdge.com: Right on. I read where Atreyu had a hard transition to Victory Records in the initial going, but obviously it’s a relationship that’s paid off in the end with their extensive advertising and a really nice push of you guys. Tell me what was so awkward in the beginning. Was it some sort of dawning like, ‘Oh shit, we’re signed to this label?’

Travis Miguel: Yeah, definitely! When we recorded our first demo we didn’t bother sending it to Victory because that was so far off the radar, but one thing led to another and our demo fell in the right hands and next thing you know the question becomes ‘Wow, should I sign this record contract or should I finish up school and be an adult?’

RoughEdge.com: (laughs)

Travis Miguel: But I’m glad I did and we wouldn’t be here right now if it wasn’t for Victory, you know? Especially for us growing up on a lot of the older Victory bands like Snapcase and Earth Crisis, Strive, Bloodlet, Reach the Sky, bands like that. Just to see our name on the same roster as all of those bands is just … weird. It’s cool, you know? We never thought anything like that would happen to us, so we’re stoked.

RoughEdge.com: Which one of you used to work at a Hot Topic store?

Travis Miguel: Myself and our singer Alex. Actually, that’s how I got into the band, was through them.

RoughEdge.com: Okay, right on. To me, it’s amazing to see a retail store become a symbol of counterculture. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve bought a few shirts there, but what’s funny is the things that were big in the eighties have all cycled back in that place …

Travis Miguel: Mmm hmm.

RoughEdge.com: It’s not a rebellious thing to me anymore, it’s actually quite surreal.

Travis Miguel: Yeah, yeah.

RoughEdge.com: So since you’ve worked there before, what are your thoughts on this whole Hot Topic…phenomenon, I guess you could call it?

Travis Miguel: It’s … especially for younger kids discovering more underground music, I think that’s a definite headquarters to go check out a cool new band or whatever.

RoughEdge.com: Right.

Travis Miguel: Whereas before kids didn’t have that kind of outlet unless they went to an underground uber indie store, which you can’t find those places as much anymore; they’re so few and far between. So yeah, it’s cool, you know? It’s giving kids exposure to stuff they normally might not get to see.

RoughEdge.com: That’s cool when you put it like that. Now, I’m sure you’re aware of The String Quartet tribute to Atreyu …

Travis Miguel: (laughs) Yeah!

RoughEdge.com: I mean, the cello, violin, viola, they all do seem to go hand-in-hand for some reason, man.

Travis Miguel: Yeah.

RoughEdge.com: You know, with the macabre undertones in the lyrics. Are you flattered that a project of this nature has been bestowed upon you guys? It usually takes a whole career for tribute albums to surface on a band.

Travis Miguel: Definitely! I remember the first time I ever heard of that concept, you know, hearing a string quartet cover metal, was when it was done to those Metallica songs. So the fact there’s a string quartet out there who actually took the time to learn our songs and kind of transcribe and translate them to four completely different instruments. It’s beyond me … it’s cool, you know? It’s flattering.

RoughEdge.com: Yeah.

Travis Miguel: To listen to it, it’s kind of … again, it’s very surreal just to hear it in a different format like that, but it’s cool.

RoughEdge.com: Absolutely. Now, you guys are headlining this Thick as Thieves Tour with Unearth, Norma Jean and Scars of Tomorrow. You’re riding high with sold out shows and I’m sure you’d feel you have an agreeable cast of openers, so to this point, how’s the tour been going?

Travis Miguel: It’s been awesome. The kids have been … initially we were a little scared because like you said, the caliber of the opening bands are so high it keeps us on our toes! (laughs) I hate going on after Unearth because they’re so good!

RoughEdge.com: (laughs)

Travis Miguel: And Norma Jean, and Scars of Tomorrow … It’s like ‘Wow, can’t slack off tonight!’

RoughEdge.com: (laughs)

Travis Miguel: Or for the rest of the tour for that matter. Yeah, we were scared kids were going to leave after the opening bands, but kids have been sticking around and singing their hearts out, moshing, and so it’s been pretty cool, you know? Every band on this tour is amazing, they’ve been definitely getting a lot out of it and so have we. It’s cool that we just got off a tour with Taking Back Sunday, which, you know, is the complete opposite of this tour and it’s cool that we can bounce back and forth like that. Yeah, it definitely feels good to be on a heavier tour this time around.

RoughEdge.com: Right on, man. Well, thanks again for having me up here.

Travis Miguel: Sure, no problem.

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