Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
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.
One of our biggest pet peeves is listening to bands that use harmony guitars for the sake of it. If you can't figure out how do something different than Maiden, UFO, or even Boston, then what's the point?
We like to be in touch with our fans, but we're also very private. 'Cause, to us, it's not about Zacky or M. Shadows or Synyster Gates. It's about Avenged Sevenfold; it's more important than any one of us.
Basically, everything I've learned on guitar, I've learned from listening to my favorite albums. I never had any formal training. My teachers were Dimebag Darrell and Slash and the guys in Rancid and Slayer.
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.
In terms of content and instrumentation, I feel we have been extremely ambitious on every one of our albums going back to high school. We were the first screaming hardcore band to put a big ballad on our record.
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.
Fans and friends are considered family. Being an A7X fan isn’t always easy because it means you’re not only gonna laugh with us, but cry with us and defend us on occasion. If you’re part of the family it’s for life.
I think everyone's trying to come up together and bring up other bands along the way, and we've always been really blessed to have bands like Metallica and Iron Maiden take us under their wing and say nice things about us.
We've shown everyone we are musicians first and foremost: we'll produce our own albums and play The 100 Club. We earned people's respect. We're not the band on MTV, wearing a bunch of makeup. We've proved we're the real deal.
Everything an artist does is scary, but we do it anyway. If someone tries to steer you off-course, push them outta the way and get back on course. Never giving up - that's what I truly believe all the greatest bands have done.
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'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.
It was a big deal for us to be on Ozzfest, especially as one of the main headliners and being the band that wasn't announced: the mystery band. We'd never played the second stage at Ozzfest, and all of a sudden we're on the main stage.
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.
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.
When we called each other and got the call that Jimmy had died, literally, it all ended right there. Everything we've ever known as human beings, everything we've ever known as a band, changes at that moment, and you can't think clearly.
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.
I've never felt that way. I've never felt like a looser. You can't get what you want if you feel like it's you against the world. You'll never get anywhere with negativity. I make my own opportunities I don't feel like everything is against me.
I remember when I was a kid, every time the Beatles were on the radio, my dad would say he'd give me a dollar if I could tell him what band it was. So by the time I was about nine, I knew to just say 'The Beatles,' and I'd get a dollar out of it.
You always have to try new things, and that's the one thing that we've learned from all the greats - every album isn't gonna be every fan's favorite, but as long as you keep switching it up and making new fans, it's really about being persistent.
If we were to find a drummer that we were comfortable with and who we felt could really become a part of what we're about, it'd be great. But would we ever rush to find a guy just get back on the road? No. I think we'd rather go down with the ship.
'Waking the Fallen' truly encompasses everything that Avenged Sevenfold was at that time. It was us being fearless, us showing our roots in heavy metal, punk, rock n' roll, and not being afraid to try everything under the sun when it comes to writing music.
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 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.
After 'City of Evil,' the world was still kind of apprehensive about Avenged Sevenfold. They didn't know if we were a serious band or just some kids trying to play really ambitious music with crazy guitar parts that would be here one minute and gone the next.
There are so many people involved in making an album, and naturally, all you want to do is show it to your friends and family. You just can't do any of that because all it takes is one morsel of information on the Internet. Within seconds, it's around the whole world.
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!
We really wanted to create an album that had no boundary or limit to it. There's nothing to say that we couldn't release a song that belongs on 'The Stage' 20 years into our career. We want it to be an album that constantly grows with what we want to do, and that's what we did.
I absolutely remember when I decided upon playing Ernie Ball strings, and it was right then and there at the guitar store up in Seattle when I picked up my first guitar ever. They said, 'What kind of strings should we put on it?' And I just looked at the brightest color package and said, 'That one!'
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.
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.'
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.
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 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.
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.
I've had the chance to watch Metallica's James Hetfield from the side of the stage night after night, listening to his monitors, and his playing is so perfect. Slash is an amazing lead guitarist, but when you listen to his rhythm playing, you can hear how he pulls everything together with such a great feel, which is the most important thing.
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.
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.