ATREYU Announces 'A Torch In The Dark' EP And 'The Beautiful Dark Of Life' Album

ATREYU has announced the final installment of its three-part EP series, "A Torch In The Dark", due November 3, leading into "The Beautiful Dark Of Life" album, out in December via Spinefarm.

Today, the band released "(i)". If you can't remember where you came from, can you truly know who you are? ATREYU frontman Brandon Saller wrestles with this idea, and on "(i)", he examines his own perplexing inability to remember anything of note from his childhood.

"A Torch In The Dark" EP continues the journey set by "The Hope Of A Spark" EP and "The Moment You Find Your Flame" EP leading into "The Beautiful Dark Of Life", which is a culmination of all three representing pieces of a puzzle, collectively amounting to something far greater.

This EP is about self-discovery, finding your purpose and confidence, and your future again. A victory through the shadows and conquering the darkness — for now.

"Many people remember these moments and experiences that shaped who they are in very formative years," Saller says. "But for me, that period of my life is one big void. There are things about me as a person and things I do to this day that I don't like, but I don't understand why."

"We draw strength from each other and give each other the space and support to be the best, most creative person we can be," guitarist Dan Jacobs explains. "And together, right now, that makes us the best band we've ever been."

"Everything that we have put out to this point has built up to this moment," concludes Jacobs. "Something special is happening with ATREYU right now. We can feel the creativity and collaboration when the five of us get in the studio. We can feel the confidence we all give each other when we stand on stage together. And we can see it in the audience when they're losing their minds. They're having as good a time as we are ourselves."

"A Torch In the Dark" track listing:

01. (i)
02. Death Or Glory
03. Evermore
04. Come Down

In an interview with Rock 100.5 The KATT's Cameron Buchholtz conducted at last month's Rocklahoma festival in Pryor, Oklahoma, Saller spoke about ATREYU's decision to shift their focus away from releasing albums to putting out a series of EPs.Saller said: "The whole project as a whole kind of tells sort of the same story in repeat. And we just wanted a way to kind of just be able to shine a light on the songs a little bit more individually. I feel like a lot of times you put out albums these days and you get three or four songs that get any sort of attention. The rest of them just go by the wayside, which sucks when you're creating art and putting everything you have into art."

He continued: "Each EP goes through the cycles of life, the seasons of life, if you will, to tell one big story at the end. So it's kind of a way that we can get a little bit more in depth with a kind of a story and also a way that we can have our audience really be able to focus on smaller portions of songs at a time."

Asked if he and his bandmates are seeing that sort of engagement and fans following the story, Brandon said: "Absolutely. I feel like, you just see it, just when [you look at] the [streaming] numbers, you see each song kind of getting a little bit more of a limelight and having a little bit more of kind of a day in the sun. So that feels nice for us."

Saller previously talked about ATREYU's decision to release a series of EPs this past July in an interview with the "Brutally Delicious" podcast. At the time, he said: "I care less and less about the traditional kind of methods of things and more about, how do we actually get people to have the opportunity to digest all of the art? … You put out an album, put out 12 songs on an album and four of 'em get a light shined on them and are in the tens of millions of streams and have all this attention and then the other eight are in the hundreds of thousands, if that — maybe they hit a million. They're in the dark and you spent all this time on these songs.

"We're not a band that has historically put out records with a bunch of filler; it's hard to get songs past us," he explained. "So, for us, it's, like, 'Oh, well, man, it just didn't have opportunity to get shown.'

"I'm all about alternative methods of release," Saller added. "I think that physical release really only lies in vinyl and cool, like, collectors' kind of stuff these days. I don't care about CDs. I couldn't play a CD if I wanted to. I don't have a CD [player] in my car. I don't have a CD player in my computer. But as far as just releasing things, I just wanna release things that make it more accessible and easy to actually consume and digest them. And I think that that potentially is in singles and EPs. I don't know everything or anything. So we'll see how it goes."

ATREYU and MEMPHIS MAY FIRE recently joined forces for the "We Want Your Misery" tour, with CATCH YOUR BREATH and ANOTHER DAY DAWNS as support. ATREYU also joined GODSMACK for select dates before embarking on a run of Canadian shows with IRON MAIDEN, starting on September 28.

Photo credit: Micala Austin