Now Leaving Vice City, Population: 5
Avenged Sevenfold really does prefer headbanging over hedonism
By Brien Overly

They’re partiers. They’re general purveyors of debauchery. They’re a stereotypical metal band with an excessive approach to all things in life. They like their guitar riffs loud and shredding, their women of model caliber (but still mildly trashy) and their drinks hard and inebriating. That’s probably what you think of Avenged Sevenfold if you have never met them, isn’t it?

Leave it to the now reigning kings of modern metal, though, to take any and all misconceptions and give them a big middle finger. Whatever your take on them, they’ll likely prove you wrong just for the sake of proving you wrong and if that means sparking a little heated debate along the way, then so be it.

Let’s clear one thing up first: maybe you’ve read the other interviews with Avenged, portraying them as this larger than life band, intent on self-destruction by means of a reckless pursuit of indulgence. Maybe said articles made them appear mildly egotistical, even high and mighty, claiming themselves as the saviors of hard rock. If those articles left you with a sour taste for all that is Avenged, let it be know that that is most definitely not everything this band is about. Underneath all the pancake-faced makeup and bravado, this band of well-dressed, Orange County-bred vampires is just five nice guys. Five nice guys who happen to get into a lot of trouble.

So far, the band has been disproving the drunken partier image since their days on this summer’s Vans Warped Tour. “We haven’t been doing as much partying outside the bus as we used to. Not any crazy stories yet,” says bassist Johnny Christ, though that may just be due to setting. “We haven’t been on a second story yet,” he adds, which older Avenged fans will understand from an incident that involved Christ, a container filled with urine and a window, resulting in a very angry venue staff.

When your band mates are singer M. Shadows, guitarists Synyster Gates and Zack Vengeance and drummer The Rev (short for Reverend Tholomew Plague, mind you), however, the calm is not likely to last. “Have a camera crew follow us around and they would probably have their own story to tell,” jokes Christ.

Just as a side note to any newcomers to the Avenged mythos before we proceed, don’t bother analyzing the names or asking what they’re derived from, we’re already past that. “We did it because we knew it would piss a lot of people off and we liked the idea of that,” says Vengeance of having the stage names. “We figured if we could ever make it big, the names really don’t matter.” So now that they kind of are big, do they matter?
While we’re at it, Christ hates getting asked what the band name means, too. Go read the book of Genesis.

Now that said, the members of Avenged Sevenfold did need to get serious for the release of their latest album, City of Evil. There was a lot that happened to the band since the release of their critically acclaimed previous album, Waking the Fallen, a lot of anticipation and a lot of expectation. City would be the band’s first release on major label Warner Bros., which they jumped to from Hopeless two years ago. Longtime fans were already speculative about how the jump to a major would affect the band and skeptical of whether the band would be able to top their prior release. Needless to say, Avenged really had to step it up.
“It was a lot more hard work,” says Christ of the songwriting process for City of Evil. “Sitting in a garage seven days a week for hours, mostly with Shadows and Synyster. We’d all come in, they’d have a pro tools rig they were working on, we’d hear it, learn it and do our own parts on it.”

One of the biggest complaints longtime fans of the band had was the fact that Shadows’ signature screaming had been significantly downplayed for a more melodic style, channeling Axl Rose and James Hetfield more than contemporaries Alex Varkatzas or Brandan Schiepatti. “Lyrically, Shadows had many different inspirations. ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,’ Dimebag Darrell’s death, a whole bunch of people talking about the end of the world and it never happening, that kind of thing,” says Christ.

While this may seem like a radically deliberate reinvention of their sound, Christ insists, “It just kind of happened that way. Nothing was really intentional. It’s just the evolution of a band that’s growing together.” Which is definitely not a bad thing, as Christ adds, “You can hear our influences now more than ever.”

“We’re a metal band but we bring a lot to the table as far as fusing in a bunch of styles of music,” says Vengeance. “We’re like the gateway band that can get that haven’t been listening to metal.”

Listening to the tracks on City of Evil, Avenged does indeed cover a broad spectrum of moods from song to song, from the chaotically frenzied lead single “Bat Country” to the smooth yet raw and dirty vocals of “Beast and the Harlot.” Then there is the melodically slow “Seize the Day,” which continues the trend of the power ballad that the band made so cool again with the nine-minute epic, “I Won’t See You Tonight, Pt. 1,” from Waking the Fallen.
“Some of the most moving songs in recent history have been power ballads,” says Vengeance. “I don’t know if I like the term ‘power ballad,’ but I guess it does apply. I think it’s great though. We get a lot of letters from kids [saying] that some of the songs have really touched them, and that’s the entire point of writing songs like those.”

On that same token, Avenged is also aware that their exploration of new sounds, in conjunction with their signing to a major label, leaves them open to getting tagged as sellouts, but that doesn’t much bother them either. “I don’t buy into that. You either sell out or you don’t, there’s no in-between there. We’ve kept our integrity through this whole change,” says Christ adamantly.

“It’s always been about the music,” he says, “but there’s a certain point where you want to get fucking huge. You want to at least have the option to get huge, to have the distribution of a major label so everyone gets to hear it. If you only have the distribution of an independent label, not everyone is going to get to hear it because there’s no push for it.”
If nothing else, though, Christ does admit to liking the heated debate arising over City of Evil. “Hopefully they love it or hate it. I don’t want any in-between.”

In fact, he welcomes people to not like the album. “I love it,” Christ says of criticism of the album. “I want them either loving it or hating it and if they’re talking shit that means they’re hating it.” And that doesn’t bother him in the least.

“I’ve never heard any good reasons why they hate it, but I love what we do. I’m never going to hear a reason and be like, ‘Oh shit, he’s right.’ This is what I love to do. I wouldn’t be in a band if it wasn’t.”

One thing to be said to Avenged’s credit is that there is no fear of going against the grain of what’s in at the moment and challenging popular trends.

“It’s upsetting to see rock and roll that’s not rock and roll,” says Christ. “There’s no attitude to it, there’s no one standing out. You have one band that comes out with one thing and there are ten million more of them getting signed right behind them that all sound exactly the same.”
“No one stands out because no one has any attitude, and that’s what rock and roll has always been. The one thing that has deteriorated rock and roll music altogether is that nothing has fucking attitude anymore, they’re all PC. I just don’t understand it.”

And indeed, upon listening to City of Evil in its entirety, the first descriptive word that comes to mind is attitude. That air of badass-ness that just goes without saying, reeking of testosterone with every lighter-worthy guitar solo. “Rock and roll should still have that attitude. I don’t think that we’re going to single-handedly change that, but we’re definitely going to do our own thing,” says Christ.

Luckily, for every shit-talking former fan or naysaying adversary, the band has their own steadily growing army of support, dedication to the death in the name of Avenged. “It was a little weird at times,” says Christ of the fiercely loyal following his band has amassed, “but I love those kids, man. The hardcore fans are what kept us going, what kept Avenged Sevenfold growing, pushing Avenged down their friends’ throats, saying ‘love it or love it.’”
Go to any of their shows just to witness firsthand what a nearly-religious experience it has become, with tattoos of the band’s skull-bat symbol bonding more than a few people to their band. “We’ve met so many kids that have Avenged Sevenfold tattoos. That’s like the ultimate expression of thanks,” says Vengeance.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who has followed the band’s career, though. Having transcended obscurity in the fertile grounds of Orange County’s overflowing hardcore scene and since coming to lead the pack of today’s modern metalheads, dare it be said that Avenged has given its listeners something to believe in? While Christ is quick to say his band consists of anything but role models, Vengeance says, “We’re just out there trying to do something different. We don’t care about being criticized or ridiculed for what we do. I think a lot of our fans can relate to that because, growing up, there are times that they’ll get shit for stuff that they do or don’t do. We let them know that it’s OK to do whatever they feel is best for them.”

As such, it would seem that most of the band’s fans recognize this, and have embraced the current stage of their evolution accordingly. “They’ve been really receptive crowds, it makes it so much more fun to play,” says Christ.

So what do you think of Avenged Sevenfold now? Any different opinions?
Now ask Christ if he and the rest of Avenged really are the definitive badasses of metal that the media exaggerate and sensationalize. With a laugh, he says, “I like to think so.”