New Album of Reimagined Greatest Hits ‘The Pronoia Sessions‘ Coming This Fall!
American metalcore stalwarts ATREYU share their version of the American classic “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” – another stellar track from their upcoming collection of eight reimagined greatest hits and two nostalgic tribute covers The Pronoia Sessions. The digital release will begin streaming on October 25th while vinyl and CDs will hit streets on November 8th.
On their version of Tom Petty’s “Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” frontman Brandon Saller comments:
“This song is a classic. Pure and simple. This is us, again, trying to breathe new life into an already legendary song.”
ATREYU is a band with a legacy seamlessly intertwined with formative experiences for a diverse legion of listeners worldwide. The Pronoia Sessions deconstructs, recreates, and reshapes the Orange County, California, band’s beloved anthems (and cover songs) as a haunting and hypnotic new collection. What began as an acoustic album evolved into a grand re-imagining of ATREYU classics.
The genesis stretches back to a series of acoustic performances at special events on the road.
“We had the idea to do a show similar to Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged as a one-off thing,” explains Saller. “Then we thought, ‘Why not spend some time on it in the studio?’ And it built from there. ‘How far can we push this?’ It spawned from there and unexpectedly turned into this monster.“
He adds:
“This album, to us, was something that initially came from the fans. During Covid, we started toying around with doing acoustic performances for the first time in our career. Since the release of ‘Gone (Reimagined),’ the outpouring of love and interest from our fans was overwhelming. It got us thinking…what if we didn’t just make some of our classics acoustic, what if we took them to a whole new place? We feel with this album we have carved out a new home for these songs to stand on their own. They are new entities in our musical landscape.
“Making this album brought us such a sense of joy and creativity. It was as if the universe handed us this moment and it was meant to happen…hence, ‘The Pronoia Sessions’.“
Pre-Order The Pronoia Sessions HERE.
ATREYU’s riffs, hooks, melodies, lyrics, and passion are essential parts of a vibrant subculture’s emergence across theaters, clubs, festivals, radio, and playlists. The artistic fearlessness powering landmark albums like ‘The Curse and Lead Sails Paper Anchor’ is even stronger in 2024. “Becoming the Bull,” one of the two gold singles released in 2007, takes on new life on The Pronoia Sessions.
The songs reimagined on ‘The Pronoia Sessions’ stretch back to 2004’s ‘The Curse'(“Right Side of the Bed”) and 2006’s ‘A Death-Grip On Yesterday’ (“Ex’s & Ohs,” “The Theft”). Two of their biggest hits, “Warrior” and “Save Us,” are reworked from 2021’s ‘Baptize.’ And there are new versions of “Gone” and “Drowning” from their most recent release, 2023’s ‘The Beautiful Dark of Life.’
In addition to their own songs, ATREYU offers dark takes on Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ classic “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” and the enduring, Chris Cornell-led Audioslave ballad “Like a Stone.”
“Let’s see how we can take what exits already and turn it on its head. With some of the older stuff, the vocals have a more melodic approach, but with much of the same phrasing,” Saller explains. “We’ve also incorporated more members of the band. Porter sings, like on ‘Ex’s & Ohs.’ On ‘Right Side of the Bed,’ there’s a saxophone solo instead of a guitar solo, and it’s Dan playing the saxophone.”
Unbound by false restrictions about anything sounding “too heavy” or “too pop,” ATREYU remains a creative beacon of hope for the people shaken by the suggestion that “rock is dead.” They’ve broken into the Top 10 in the Billboard 200 more than once; two of their albums are certified gold.
ATREYU’s unquenchable appetite for creative achievement and pursuit of a shared catharsis on stage drove them to form the band as teenagers around the turn of the millennium. It pushed them beyond their do-it-yourself beginnings to massive festival stages (including two runs on Ozzfest), sold-out headlining tours, movie and game soundtracks, and appearances alongside fellow genre standard-bearers, including Linkin Park, Avenged Sevenfold, Deftones, Slipknot, and Bring Me The Horizon.
A bold chapter in the band’s never-ending story of determination, ‘Baptize’ was a definitive work for a new era. Like 2018’s ‘In Our Wake’ (which produced the band’s biggest song of the streaming era, “The Time is Now”), ATREYU recorded ‘Baptize’ with producer John Feldmann. Guests included Jacoby Shaddix (Papa Roach), Travis Barker (blink-182), and Matt Heafy (Trivium). Songs like “Warrior,” “Catastrophe,” “Save Us,” and “Underrated” are massive, standing confidently in the band’s catalog.
Breaking with music industry convention, the band’s ninth studio album, ‘The Beautiful Dark of Life,’ arrived first as a series of three four-song EPs, eventually collected all together with three more tracks. The band co-headlined with Memphis May Fire and toured with Godsmack around the EPs.
Distorted Sound hailed the album as “a therapeutic exploration of the insecurities that plague many of us, taking the knowledge of that shared experience and wielding it to their own strength.”
Adeptly combining the sounds of thrash, hardcore punk, and the new wave of Swedish death metal, ATREYU quickly evolved to a place where fans of everything from Linkin Park to Lamb Of God could come to the party. Adventurous, ambitious; ATREYU is best described plainly as a loud rock band.
As one prominent hard rock critic observed early in the band’s career:
“If you haven’t figured out these guys are aiming for a bigger sound by now, you might want to try cleaning out your ears.”