Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If I was to play any song for anybody asking, 'What is metal about?' I'd just play 'Master of Puppets.' The progressions and the bridge are brilliant.
It's important to know the ins and outs of the music business, but you can also dive too deeply into it and forget that you're really here to make music.
When you look at metal, it's probably one of the healthiest genres when you look at it in a worldwide perspective - every single country listens to metal.
If you're going to put out a record just to get a No. 1 and then forget about it after the first week, it's the tail wagging the dog: it doesn't make any sense.
I think the cool thing about being alive in 2017 is that you can literally put out music as soon and as frequently as you want to because of streaming services.
The metalcore has been left behind. It's not something that any of us find enjoyment in listening to, so it's obviously not the direction we would write songs in.
I think Kanye West is brilliant at what he does: he's got a different live show, different merch for every tour, different vibes, and he just puts out great records.
I think everyone in the band has had someone that's served in their family. I wouldn't say that anybody has a military family, but both of my grandfathers were in the military.
We just found that in 2016, if you announce a record, and it's coming out in three months, and you're just giving people breadcrumbs, it's the most boring, drawn-out experience.
Ever since 'Hail to the King,' we've been more cognizant of our chord progressions, our key changes, drama in songs, a lot of dynamics - we've really added a lot of that in there.
If we can inspire a kid to pick up a guitar - and less and less kids are doing so these days - it'd be really cool because I know how it felt growing up and how special that was for me.
The more kids that we can meet or kids that are terminally ill, we try to do it because it's really important, and you can see the hope in their eyes and in their families and their parents.
I go online, and I love watching heavy metal bands and guitar players play heavy metal versions of the 'Zelda' theme, and people do all the 'Zelda' music, which is one of my favorite soundtracks.
We're trying to change the whole way our merch is viewed, in terms of just not a bunch of skulls interlaced; you know, every album can look the same, so they're going to be stylized and different.
Those who are not very good at understanding mental health issues are not going to know what other people are going through in depression. You have to kind of put yourself in somebody else's shoes.
I feel like our whole discography up through 'Hail to the King' was young, fun, and exciting. It was aggressively driven. 'The Stage' was the first step in the band becoming a more mature musical entity.
The Brexit thing to me just looks like a difference of opinion. I know things were lied about, but that should be a wake-up call to get all the information before you vote about something. Educate yourself.
Always from day one, we were the band on Warped Tour with a fog machine, and our backdrop had to be up - everyone thought we were the biggest idiots for that, total posers. But for us, we wanted to be over the top.
We grew up with every type of band from Primus to Mr. Bungle to Elton John to pop music to metal, and we try to throw it all in a blender. And whatever comes out of that is more Avenged Sevenfold than metal or metalcore.
One thing that was frustrating to us, always, was having to do so much press building up an album, and you're asked so many questions about, you know, is it more melodic, is it heavier, are you doing your old stuff, is it new?
We kind of reached this point in life where we don't really want to put out anything just to put something out. We really don't want it to be like, 'Two years are up. You've had your break; now do another record and get it out there.'
I've had friends who've had depression or been on medication because their pituitary glands aren't giving out enough hormones - so I've been around a lot of people who've had problems like that. I've always been open to talk about that.
If there's something I really like or a chord progression, I write a note in my Blackberry, and maybe a year later, I'll revisit it and ask, 'What did I like about that?' I really don't try to think too much about it. I like to be fresh.
I've said the Grammys messed up metal because it's not on TV. What I'm saying is when you're in a metal category, it's not televised, and it doesn't move the needle forward for metal artists, and I wish they had more respect for the genre.
The world is changing, and the way we consume music is obviously changing. I was one of the biggest CD advocates you will find, but when Apple music and digital options came out, like for everyone else, it was more conducive to my lifestyle.
All I can say to people who don't think depression is a real thing, or say 'just suck it up and get over it' - they just really have no idea. You have to give people the benefit of the doubt that they're doing the best they can to get through it.
Usually, when you're putting out a record, you have reviews from people a week before, and you have a vibe 'cause everyone's heard it - you've heard feedback from everyone, and they've listened to your single for a couple of months. Radio's playing it.
One thing I loved when I was growing up, you maybe saw one review from a magazine like 'Rolling Stone,' but now there are 150 reviews before an album even comes out. There are so many opinions out there, but the only one that really matters is your own.
Games helped me a lot when The Rev died. It was something I able to go do and stay in the house and not have to be outside and deal with people. But I also found a community online that I was able to escape the feeling I was having of losing a best friend.
The song 'Paradigm' talks about nanobots - and how they can potentially be used to cure diseases and help you live forever. But how much of a human being would you be at that point? If you're 70 percent machine and 30 percent human, are you going to lose yourself?
We do a lot of things that kind of annoy people and our fan base. We try not to get overloaded on it. For us, that means we don't do social media stuff - we have an Avenged Sevenfold social media, but none of the band members have Facebooks or any sort of Twitter.
The first Maiden record I ever got was 'Piece of Mind,' and I only got it because I thought the artwork was cool, and everyone talked about Iron Maiden. But they weren't necessarily the most popular metal band in America for a 12-year-old kid when I discovered them.
I recall us selling out L.A.'s 5,000-capacity Gibson Amphitheatre and flying straight to Germany to play a 300-capacity room where we'd only sold 120 tickets. This was when 'City Of Evil' was really taking off in the U.S., but it seemed like Europe was less interested.
Honestly, I never thought we'd get a nomination for a Grammy, period. To be honest, we felt that if we were ever going to get one, we thought we had 'City of Evil' and 'Nightmare' and 'Hail to the King,' and those were all big records, and they never even sniffed at us.
When you think of rock and roll and metal, a lot of it is based around the riff. If you can sing over the riff and what the arrangements are going to be like, you have to leave space for what most people consider one of the most key essential parts, which is the vocalist.
People want things now. People in the rock world seem to not want to give it to them - they want to keep doing things the old way - and one thing that has always bummed me out is when we get a single three months out, and then you have to keep getting fed with bread crumbs.
When we were writing the 'Stage' album, we realized we'd never really done proper covers, where we were taking songs and making them our own and kind of playing around with them. I came up with the idea of doing a cover of 'Wish You Were Here,' but we didn't really want it on the record.
I think one of the biggest sleepers that people are going to be able to dig into later is 'Fermi Paradox,' it's the song before 'Exist.' To me it's got the coolest, it's just so bizarre because it's got one of the most melodic vocal melodies, but we put it over a black metal blast beats.
I'm kind of a geek when it comes to talking about chord structures or melody, so I always loved in-depth conversations with musicians about things. I also enjoy when a fan can just put something on, and they really know nothing about music other than they like it and it touches them in some way.
We have this yearning to know the answers to the big questions about space and why we're here; we can't evolve fast enough to figure these answers out on our own, but we can do it through artificial intelligence. But there's also some very scary downsides that could come if we don't put the right safety precautions in there.
To me, a lot people really get wrapped up in the technical side of metal and what's metal and what's not and more double-kick and more blast beats and more technicality, but for me, I'm a song person. So I think you can write good songs in any type of style of rock and any type of style of metal, and that's kind of what I'm a fan of.
Someone sent me an article on AI that was written by Tim Urban on the website Wait but Why - that was kind of where I stuck my toes in the puddle, and I said, 'OK, I've gotta learn about this!' I felt like this is one of those things that our generation is going to have to answer for, eventually, and I just wanted to educate myself on it.
The 'Black Album' was my real first introduction to Metallica. I was, like, 12 or 13 at the time. We were just getting into music, and I liked that album a lot, but it didn't necessarily change my life. But when I started picking up all the other Metallica records, 'Master of Puppets' was the one to me that stuck out with its songwriting.
I was talking to my dad about the stuff he grew up listening to, and 'Operation: Mindcrime' is a record that he had always talked about around the house. He always talked about it as the 'greatest concept album of all time.' One day, I started listening to it, and it just hit me. I was like, 'These songs are all hits. They're all huge songs.'
I think you gotta have balls to be an Avenged fan sometimes. A lot of our fans get hated on just as much as us. To me Avenged fans aren't just fans of a band, they are fans of everything that surrounds it, like a life style. We live it, you live it. You go to the shows and you can feel it. It's a great experience and people that aren't involved will never understand. So they can stand on the side lines and talk, but we will continue to do just what makes us happy.
I just want to say we support the troops and we love every one of them. Even if they...I know a lot of my friends that are in the military that they don't agree with...Some of them are total, total liberals or this or that, whatever they are and I just want to say that we love all the troops. We don't care what they believe in, they're defending our country and we love them for that. And they're the biggest bad assses...in the world and we just want to thank you. We hope they enjoy the music and we'll keep pumping it out and just keep staying bad asses!