AX7 AT THEIR STAGE
By Kelley Simms
Avenged Sevenfold
B
y carrying the proverbial torch and continually pushing musical boundaries, Avenged Sevenfold has become one of the frontrunners of a new breed of modern heavy metal rockers. Although the band has been around for almost 20 years, Avenged Sevenfold’ s trajectory continues to climb. Vocalist M. Shadows, guitarists Synyster Gates and Zacky Vengeance, bassist Johnny Christ and new drummer Brooks Wackerman have been leading the charge within the metal world. Last summer, Avenged Sevenfold was bestowed with the honor of opening for their heroes, Metallica, on the North American " WorldWired " tour, and earlier this year completed their headlining tour with
Breaking Benjamin and Bullet For My Valentine.
Guitarist Zacky Vengeance spoke with IE about all things Avenged Sevenfold. Mosh: You received an invitation to tour with your heroes, Metallica, which caused you to postpone your headlining tour last year. Zacky Vengeance: Opening for Metallica was absolutely incredible but humbling. The tour that we had spent a year designing- we’ ve only brought it over to our European fans because of the Metallica tour- we decided to hold off on doing a proper headlining arena [ here ] until now. It’ s a really different Avenged Sevenfold experience for our fans. And that’ s what makes it so special. It’ s kind of a surreal process to a different universe while we’ re playing. There’ s still tons of energy, tons of excitement and tons of fan interaction. It’ s not the typical Avenged Sevenfold show, but it’ s definitely worth checking out. There are no other bands doing anything like it.
Mosh: Although 2016’ s The Stage isn’ t a full-fledged concept album, it features a running theme. What made you want to tackle this subject matter? Zacky Vengeance: I was sitting around one day, and I came across an article about artificial intelligence and what the technological pioneers of our generation had to say about it. So I texted it to Matt( M. Shadows) for no other reason than to send him something I thought was interesting. He really dove in head first and started looking up more stuff, so that’ s where the concept came from- it was already on my radar as well as everybody else’ s in the band.
Mosh: Were you a little concerned that it might go over some of your fans’ heads? Zacky Vengeance: We fully knew it wasn’ t going to win over everyone. Somebody who bought an album and heard“ Welcome to the Family” or " Hail to the King " might not necessarily be into a 12-minute space odyssey like“ Exist.” But there are definitely people out there that think it’ s incredible. I think we did something different and unique and it was right for us at the time.
Mosh: What were you aiming for sonically; Mosh: The Stage is the first album to feature new drummer Brooks Wackerman. How important was it that his personality fit in with the rest of the band? Zacky Vengeance: It’ s really important to us because it ' s like being married to five people. We have a delicate ego( sic) system, but it’ s one that has developed because we’ re all friends and brothers first and foremost, [ then ] business partners and bandmates second. So [ to let ] anybody into that family is always scary and very difficult. We tried that before, and it didn’ t work. You can’ t just [ invite ] somebody into your home that you ' ve built for 20 years and expect they’ re going to be the world’ s best roommate. But with Brooks, we lucked out.
Mosh: What made you release The Stage with virtually no promotion beforehand? Zacky Vengeance: That was purely just to do something different, to give our fans something to talk about; just doing different things with the surprise release. It felt like the right thing to do. It was exciting for us, and we knew it’ d be exciting for our fans. We knew that it would make our record label nervous. If you’ re not making your record label nervous, then you’ re not doing it right. At first, we ran into all sorts of skepticism, and criticism, and talk about how the album hadn’ t performed as well as our past albums- because that’ s an easy headline. The truth of the matter is that nobody in the world would do as remotely as good as they did a few years ago. But for us, it didn’ t matter. We did something we wanted to do creatively, it was exciting, and we had fun with it.
Ed. Note: Just before press time, Avenged Sevenfold announced the cancellation of the remaining dates of the End of The World tour due to vocalist M. Shadow ' s viral throat infection and doctor-mandated three months of vocal rest. Additional information is forthcoming.
MOSH-WORTHY LIVE: Jag Panzer, Ancient Seance( Reggie ' s, 09 / 15); Macabre, Whut?( Brauerhouse, 09 / 22); Zao, The Atlas Moth, Yashira( Wire, 09 / 28).
34 illinoisentertainer. com august 2018