For us to dial back a little bit and have a little more straightforward, singalong appeal was a challenge. In order to do that, we had to throw away a lot of stuff.
— Zacky Vengeance
We go out there every night, and we fight the battle. We don't care about people who don't think we're true metal. We hope to change their minds. I have total faith.
We wanted to incorporate lights and the like to really accentuate the music. We play mostly small venues, so we don't use it overboard by any means. The most important thing is the music. I think we do a good job of letting that show.
We didn't say, 'Hey, we're gonna pick a bunch of cover songs,' or, 'We're gonna write an original song that has to sound like this, because we're a metal band, so we're gonna cover some metal songs.' We did the opposite. We just said, 'We're gonna have fun with these songs, and we're gonna try different things.'
Only a world spinning out of control could inspire the music and vision we have now.
We're trying to do something nobody else is doing right now.
I think there's a whole group of kids out there that don't relate to the glitz and glamour of hanging out in clubs and partying all the time. So I think some people are just more real than that, and I think our fans are those kind of kids that need something to relate to, and I think we're the band to do it.
This country is filled with remarkable people. One of my best friend's families is from Iran, and they're the most American family of all time. Some of the best people that I've ever met are immigrants.
Everyone likes to have fun. But when I look back on my life, I'm not going to say, 'Oh, we're the crazy party animals.' I'll look back and say, 'Wow, we did take this seriously.' We had fun while we were out doing it, but it's just the only thing you read about: 'They're a bunch of party animals.' To be honest, that's not true.
I have no formal guitar training whatsoever, so it's been fun learning sweep-picking techniques. Working on these types of licks has thrown a whole new collection of tricks into the mix.
We're focused on making our fans happy, keeping each other happy, so we can do this forever.
To be honest, we never, ever let business weigh down the creativity of this band.
I think we are really in touch with what's going on around us in the world of music, trying to push the bar forward and try new and exciting things that our fans can react to.
I think, as long as people have a strong opinion, whether they love or hate us, I think we're doing something right.
That's what bands like Pink Floyd and bands like Rush and even the Metallica of this world have, which is long, ambitious songs that pull in all different directions.
It's always been a conscious thing for us to do whatever will separate us from the pack and make us happy musically.
A lot of people have ideas and opinions on what Avenged Sevenfold should be or what we should do, and I think our No. 1 rule is to always make sure we never listen to any of that and to always do what we believe.
We wanted to write the kind of songs that can really cross any language barriers, any borders, and resonate with fans around the world.
There's people that have never heard our album. The most they've seen is either our video on 'TRL' or our picture on the cover of magazines.
We wanted to write songs that we really like that incorporate everything. It seems a lot of bands want to stick with one thing. We didn't want to be scared to do anything that we wanted to do. We didn't want anything to hold us back. We wanted no boundaries.
I'd like to think that we will have had something to do with a shift back to heavy rock. That's what we've wanted all along, and we knew there'd be fearless steps to take to achieve that.
We have been harnessing every aspect of what makes Avenged truly unrelenting and building off of that.
When you see a band, you want to see characters.
To be honest, we spent many years at Warner, and in the very beginning, there was a very passionate team that worked alongside us on a daily basis. Every year that went by, we would lose just about every single person that worked directly with us, to the point that I honestly couldn't have picked up a phone and gotten one person who knew me.
We've never tried to write radio hits. If I hear our song on the radio, it's cool, and I'm proud, but it's never a goal.
We're not a Screamo band.
With every album, I write above my ability, and my job as a guitarist is to catch up and be able to play it live. The thing about practicing is that once you master something, you don't have to remaster it. You just keep moving forward.
We're not the kind of people to just take a break and say everything's going good, you know, let's rest on our laurels, act like rock stars - we take it very seriously, and we certainly aren't just celebrating and doing a victory lap.
I wanna keep people on their toes, and that's just kind of how we've always operated.
You carry on knowing that there's something so much more important than yourself to deliver to millions of fans across the world, to all your friends, and to yourself.
Not everyone is going to love you. Not everyone is going to like what you do, and you see a lot of people don't want to let go of the bands that they love. They don't want to move forward. They don't want to let new things come in; they're scared of change. They're scared of new bands taking over their genre. They're just scared of change.
With 'Hail To The King' - our last album - we obviously wore our influences on our sleeve, and it was a blatant attempt to turn on our younger generation of fans to more classic-sounding metal.
We're in the business of making fans that will last with us a lifetime. In order to do that, you've gotta give them something special.
From day one, we've always gotten backlash for certain outlandish ideas that we've had and presented. That's also kind of been the driving force that's pushed us forward.
Just by nature, we're always filled with so many ideas and want to cram as many ideas into a song as we can, and I think that gave us a lot of our signature sound.
There's always going to be haters, but those people are few. We're not too worried about it.
Basically, we're just a bunch of kids who got together and try to use what we have and try to learn from each other.
Everyone loves to complain that there are no real bands on MTV, yet no one wants to step up to the plate and try to change that.
When we were recording, sometimes I wondered if what we were doing would even be possible to play live.
I remember what it felt like when I was young, and I looked up to someone, and they would pay me just an ounce of attention. And some of the bands I listened to when I was young probably never even sold any albums, but it didn't matter to me. If I'd go up and say, 'Great show,' it would be amazing that they even would acknowledge me.
I think people have the right to love whoever they want, and I think that women have the right to do whatever they wish to their bodies given the circumstances.
I worked a lot on our album cover, and I didn't just want to post it on our website one day and move on. We wound up breaking it into 18 pieces and hiding them on fan sites all over the Internet and then posting clues, so fans could put together the puzzle.
We had to take full advantage of the fact that we wanted to be one of the most creative bands out there that's getting backed by one of the biggest companies.
I think the most important thing to putting on a good show is to always mix things up. Sometimes we wear makeup; other times we don't. The point is, you'll never get the same Avenged show twice. I think it's really important to be theatrical. I mean, look at Iron Maiden!
When we were trying to come up with a concept for our music video for 'The Stage' we basically run through a lot of different ideas, and ultimately, I sat and studied the lyrics that Matt had written - and they really resonated with me.
We wanna be on the frontlines of everything new and exciting. The old world order of putting out four singles before you release an album is so boring to us.
Iron Maiden and Metallica are bigger now than they ever were. They're playing stadiums across the entire planet. Even though it seems like their heyday was back when MTV and the radio played their songs all the time, the truth is that they've gotten bigger now because they play all the time, and people know they're going to get a great show.
The first review our band ever got - when I was 17 years old and we had just released our first EP, and this tiny little magazine wrote a review on it, and for that month, we were the best album of the month, and we were also the worst album of the month. We won best and worst album of the month in the same magazine.
Once you can get a fan to listen to an album a handful of times and really have a lot of substance for them to grasp, then you're looking at having a fan that really appreciates what you do for life and can appreciate coming to see it live.
We're always talking and plotting and discussing what we can do to give our fans the best possible experience and leave everyone going home with having an amazing time and a memory that will last a lifetime.
