If your love for metalcore doesn’t extend to ’80s fantasy movies, then you may not know that Atreyu is named after the character from the movie The NeverEnding Story. In fact, if you Google Atreyu, the first question in the “People Also Ask” section is “Is Atreyu named after NeverEnding Story?”
Given that Atreyu the band has been around for 25 years, and The NeverEnding Story‘s been around even longer, frontman Brandon Saller is often confused when people don’t get the reference.
“The funniest thing to me is that after all this time, people will still be like, ‘Did you name your band after the movie?'” Saller tells ABC Audio. “That’s funny to me, because … there’s no other one. There’s no other thing we could’ve named our band after.”
If you do ask someone from Atreyu about the band name, you might get an entirely fake answer.
“We actually come up with stories and be like, ‘[Bassist] Porter [McKnight‘s] lineage goes back to some kings in Scotland and one of them’s name was Atreyu, we thought that was really cool, it was, like, royalty, so we used it,'” Saller shares.
He laughs, “And they’re like, ‘Really?’ And we’re like, ‘No. It’s from The NeverEnding Story.'”
“When we tell ’em the band name, they either know exactly what that’s referring to, or they have no idea what it is,” adds guitarist Travis Miguel. “They need us to spell it, they need us to give the whole backstory of how we got the name. So it’s either one or the other.”
Atreyu will release a new EP, The Moment You Find Your Flame, on August 18. It follows the EP The Hope of a Spark, which dropped in April.
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