ATREYU's DAN JACOBS Says Opening For IRON MAIDEN In 2009 In Monterrey, Mexico Was 'Scary As Hell': 'People Were Throwing S*** At Us'

In a new interview with Devious Dayna of This Day In Metal, ATREYU guitarist Dan Jacobs reflected on several particularly memorable gigs he and his bandmates played as the support act for British heavy metal legends IRON MAIDEN. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET):  "We've done multiple kind of little mini tours with IRON MAIDEN, which was a pretty trippy thing to do. The most recent one was a couple years ago. It was three shows in Canada, all in hockey arenas. And it was just us and them. We thought it would be this tour. When they asked us to do it, we're, like, 'Yeah, IRON MAIDEN. Yeah, let's go. Whatever you guys want.' And we're, like, 'Who else is on this tour?' And they're, like, 'No one. Just you.' Like, 'What? Just us and IRON MAIDEN?' We're, like, 'What is this? What weird pipedream is this? Okay, let's go.' But we went to do these shows, and it's just us and IRON MAIDEN. And their whole thing, like day one, they bring us up on stage — not while they're playing, but they bring us up before when we're setting up and soundchecking and stuff. And they're, like, 'All right, so this is all of our stuff. [You] just can't move any of it. Just work around it.' We're, like, 'Okay. We're just gonna play on IRON MAIDEN's stage with all their stuff.' Like, 'This is awesome.' I just felt like, 'This is such a weird, trippy experience.' Especially because we couldn't move their stuff; we had to leave it there. And you can tell this equipment's old, and they've been using this stuff since the '90s or the '80s maybe — for a long time, which is really neat, that they are doing exactly what they've been doing for so long. And I thought that's really cool, and it was really inspiring and just a neat experience… I mean, if it ain't broke, why fix it? I mean, the only reason to wanna move away from that kind of stuff nowadays is 'cause it's heavy and trying to lug heavy stuff everywhere, and gas is expensive. It's a lot to try to travel that way. And there are more economically friendly ways to be in a band these days. But those dudes, money is probably not much of an issue to them. They own their own jet, and not even just a jet — it's a full-on like 737 or whatever. It's a massive airliner. They're on a whole another level."

Dan went on to say that ATREYU's shows with MAIDEN in Canada marked the second time the two bands toured together. "The first time was in Mexico City and Monterrey back in, like, [February] 2009 or something like that," he said. "And that was not so awesome. That was scary as hell. And people were throwing shit at us. And it was horrifying. I mean, long story short, but it was two shows, Monterrey and then Mexico City. Monterrey was in a football stadium. I think it held 30,000 people. Sold-out show. We go there. We'd never been there before. And at the time we're off the back of our album 'Lead Sails Paper Anchor', and we were pretty successful at the time and figured, like, we're direct support to IRON MAIDEN. It was them, us and then CARCASS, MORBID ANGEL, and then Lauren Harris, which is the bass player of IRON MAIDEN's daughter's band; she's the singer of the band. They were opening. So we get there, and all these bands go on. The show is going great. And it gets to our turn, and we're standing on the side of the stage and our backdrop drops down. And usually the crowd's, like, 'Yay.' And they cheer when that happens. And it was just kind of quiet. And we're, like, 'That's weird. Okay, but whatever. Okay.' And also when our backdrop came down, they didn't hook it up right. So it was clipped weird in the middle. So instead of saying 'ATREYU', you just said 'TREY'. We're, like, 'Okay, well, that's not a good look, but whatever. Here we go. This is 'Spinal Tap' as hell.' So our intro starts playing. We start walking out on stage, and we start hearing like 'tink, tink, tink'. And we're, like, 'What the hell is that?' Those people were throwing pesos up on stage or smashed cups and just flicking 'em up on stage or just any random shit. 'Cause opening up for IRON MAIDEN in certain countries is — they do not wanna see anybody else other than IRON MAIDEN or other very, very metal bands. And our band teeters being emo band in Mexico. And especially at that time, and that did not go over very well. So people were throwing stuff at us the entire set, and it was horrifying. Our bass player got hit in the face with this bullet that was like a keychain that somebody hooked up, hit him on the side of the head, split him open. He was on the cover of the newspaper the next day. It was a whole thing. And then we got off stage, and our tour manager's, like, freaking out. And we're, like, 'Dude, what are you so freaked out about?' And he's, like, 'I don't know how tell you guys this, but the show tomorrow is twice as big.' We're, like, 'Oh my God.' We're, like, 'We don't wanna be direct support to IRON MAIDEN anymore. This is terrifying.' But we had 'em switch us with CARCASS. We're, like, 'Put us a little bit earlier. There's too much pressure. We're not the right band for this spot.' And we went and did it. We made our set a little bit heavier, played a little bit earlier, and it went over a lot better. And the crowd was not as throwing stuff at us. But, yeah, two very different IRON MAIDEN experiences, both very interesting and wild. One being positive, the Canadians being very nice, and down in Mexico, at an IRON MAIDEN show they're very aggressive and scary."

After Devious Dayna noted that it's "actually insane to hear" that fans would throw metal coins on stage just because they weren't fans of the band that was performing at the time, Dan concurred. "Yeah, it's wild because you think if you talked face to face with any one of these people, it's, like, we're all just a bunch of human beings standing up there," he said. "Guys, why are you throwing things at us? If you don't like the music, just don't listen to it. Just talk to your friend next to you or something. You don't need to throw shit at us. It's horrifying.

"IRON MAIDEN and SLAYER, in particular, are two of the most known bands in the world for having fans that are very aggressive," Jacobs explained. "I've seen many a band open for either of those bands and get bad responses, similar to ours, where the whole crowd turns their back to them. If you're not the right type of band… Certain countries just have different ways of digesting music and the way that they act at concerts culturally, so things are just different — not for better, for worse; sometimes for better, for worse — but it's just different everywhere. So some places we can comfortably go and open for a band like IRON MAIDEN. There's certain countries, it's not really safe for us to go open for IRON MAIDEN, 'cause we're not the right type of metal, which is weird."

Despite the fact that ATREYU's first show with IRON MAIDEN was such a frightening experience for him and his bandmates, Dan said that he procured a "souvenir" from the Mexico shows which ended up being "pretty neat". He explained: "When you play shows anywhere in the Latin American countries, there's tons of bootleg merchandise. It's just absolutely inevitable and just kind of part of the game. So when you go out to a show as big as an IRON MAIDEN one, where they're playing stadiums, there is just an entire street, just both sides of it, going for a mile of all just bootleg merchandise. And I was walking through this thing, just looking at it all, 'cause I'm, like, 'This is mind-blowing. I've never seen anything like this before.' And I came across this one booth that had an IRON MAIDEN shirt where their mascot Eddie, he's wearing these little shorts and he's dropkicking the world like it's a soccer ball or whatever. And on the back of it, it has the tour name and it has IRON MAIDEN and it had all the bands that were on this tour, including our name. And I was, like, 'That's fucking awesome.' Even though it's not official, it's still an IRON MAIDEN shirt that has their logo, the whole shebang, and it has our name on it with all these bands. I'm, like, 'When would I ever have thought I'd have an IRON MAIDEN shirt with ATREYU's name on it?' So I had to buy it. So, I have that shirt. I bought a guitar when I was out there, and I keep it in the case with that guitar. So anytime I open it up, it has that little memory of playing with IRON MAIDEN there."

Back in November 2024, ATREYU bassist Marc "Porter" McKnight told Samuel Acevedo of El Planeta Del Rock that the Monterrey gig with MAIDEN was "one of the toughest shows" he and his bandmates "ever had to play". He said: "There was 35,000 people there, sold out. And the first 5,000 people at that show did not want fucking anything to do with any band but IRON MAIDEN. And because we were right before IRON MAIDEN, they hated us the most. Or maybe because we had tight pants and weren't as heavy."

He continued: "Isn't it funny that IRON MAIDEN's not that heavy, actually, but they have, like, the gnarliest fanbase on earth? They're so theatric and triumphant and then every fan is, like, beating shit out of each other. It's hilarious. I love it. I fucking love it. But that show, they threw a lot of stuff at us. There was a lot of physical violence. There were pesos being thrown at us. I actually got hit right here [below my right eye]. I have a dent in my skull from it, from a metal spike. Fuck, I wish I had it. I do have it, but I don't know where it is. I kept it. It almost put my eye out. I was headbanging really fast. And it hit me right [below the eye]. I was bleeding everywhere. It was fucking wild. So that show was difficult, but past those 5,000 people that were ravenous for IRON MAIDEN, [we had] circle pits, [people] singing along, we sold all of our merch — they fucking loved us. We had a blast."

ATREYU's new studio album, "The End Is Not The End", will be released on April 24 via Spinefarm.

Image credit: Rock & Metal From The Front Row