Will ALEX VARKATZAS Perform ATREYU Songs With His New Band DEAD ICARUS? He Responds

In a new interview with the "BREWtally Speaking" podcast, ex-ATREYU frontman Alex Varkatzas was asked if he plans to perform any of the songs he helped write for his former band when he starts playing shows with his current project DEAD ICARUS. He responded in part (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET):  "Behind the scenes, I've talked with our manager and stuff about that, if that's something that I'm comfortable with. And I don't know. I think it's something that I would have to talk with [producer, guitarist and bassist] Gabe [Mangold] or who's ever gonna be performing with me at the time, if that's something that they'd feel comfortable with. And I would wanna somehow poll the fans and see if that's what they want.

"If you come to [see] DEAD ICARUS, I don't want it to be an expected thing, but I'm also very grateful that all these people have let me do this for so long," he explained. "And then when there hasn't been music, they supported my art, they supported this or that. How can I pay you back for it? It's not like someone's gonna offer me thousands of thousands of dollars to go play ATREYU songs. So it's not about money — I don't really think so — but I think that to make people stoked would be awesome. To make true fans who wanna see those songs with me, I think that would be something that I could entertain."

Alex added: "[As] you can tell, I'm still not a hundred percent there. To an extent, if I'm being totally honest, ATREYU to me was five dudes working together with a certain synergy. Any deviation from that to me doesn't jive, does not compute. So me [playing those songs] by myself, it would feel weird. It feels dirty in a way. I have to differentiate, I have to ask myself — and I'm just being honest; we're just riffing — would I just be doing it for money or would I be doing it to make people happy? And the reason I think, when I ask myself what I think about it, I would be doing it to make people happy — I have these deep conversations with myself — is because I don't think anyone's out there offering to pay me, like I said, thousands and thousands of dollars to go play 'Live, Love, Burn, Die'. And it would feel weird if it was; it would feel like dirty money in a way.

"Like I said, I toy with it," he said. "I think about it. I think also about the execution of it as well. Originally, I wrote the framework for Brandon's [Saller, ATREYU singer] parts, but some of them I can sing to a degree and some of them I wouldn't wanna touch. And it's still weird for me, even though I could do it singing it. So there's just a lot of like bridges that I would need to cross mentally. I think the number one thing is if it was gonna make the people who give me life and give DEAD ICARUS lifeblood, if it's gonna make them stoked to play one to three songs randomly every now and then, I'm not opposed to it — I'm not 100 percent opposed to it at all. But I want to be careful that that doesn't become like an expected, 'Oh, this is the part where he's gonna play fucking [an ATREYU song].' … I don't want things to be automatic anymore. I just wanna see passion."

DEAD ICARUS has released three songs so far: "So I Set Myself On Fire", "The Vultures Circle" and "Sellout".

DEAD ICARUS recently signed a worldwide deal with MNRK Heavy. The band's first full-length project is slated for spring 2024.

A staple of Ozzfest in the mid-2000s with two gold albums, ATREYU is one of the defining bands of the New Wave Of American Heavy Metal, alongside groups like AVENGED SEVENFOLD and LAMB OF GOD. Metalcore classics like "The Curse" and "A Death-Grip On Yesterday" were powered by Alex's distinctive scream.

In October 2020, ATREYU surprise-released a new song called "Save Us". It was the first taste of the band's music since the departure of Varkatzas a month earlier. A couple of days before "Save Us"'s release, Varkatzas updated his Instagram stories with hashtags that seemed to throw shade at his former bandmates and their new material: #fakeheavy, #conartists and #justwaitandsee.

In December 2020, Brandon implied in an interview with "Sappenin' Podcast With Sean Smith" that ATREYU was no longer on speaking terms with Varkatzas: "We'll call it a breakup," he said. "There's obviously a separation, so I think that's something that, in our hopes, the future will heal. But the five of us in the current situation are tighter than ever."