ON THE RISE
In 2013, Avenged Sevenfold were leading the new generation of metal superstars. That year’s Hail To The King album saw them sounding bigger and bolder and more determined to step up to the big leagues than ever. As they explained to Metal Hammer in this classic interview from the time, they had their eyes on the prize – and nothing was going to stand in their way.
On December 17, 2011 Avenged Sevenfold closed out 18 months of touring on their fifth album, Nightmare, with a headline show at the Citizens Business Bank Arena in Ontario, California. It was an emotional night for the band from nearby Huntingdon Beach, a homecoming show drawing the curtains on the most intense chapter in their 12-year career.
Two years previously, on December 28, 2009, the young Californians’ world had fallen apart when their drummer and lifelong friend, Jimmy ‘The Rev’ Sullivan, passed away suddenly at the age of 28, throwing their entire future into question and leaving them with a thousand unanswered questions. For a time, the idea of continuing as a band seemed unimaginable. Ultimately, M. Shadows (Matthew Sanders), Synyster Gates (Brian Haner Jr), Zacky Vengeance (Zachary Baker) and Johnny Christ (Jonathan Seward) decided to persevere, recording the nakedly emotional Nightmare in tribute to their fallen brother. It became the band’s first US No.1 album and propelled them into arenas worldwide, solidifying their bonds with one of the most hardcore fanbases in modern metal.
“Without you, we’d be four miserable dudes sitting at home,” Shadows told the 11,000 strong Ontario crowd on December 17, 2011. As cheers rang out around the arena, however, one simple question remained hanging in the air for Avenged Sevenfold: “What now?”
“In the back of my head there was the slightest feeling of ‘Is this the end?’” the singer concedes today. “I didn’t know if, in a way, it would be more appropriate if we stopped or more appropriate if we continued. But at the end of the day, these other three guys are my best friends, and we’re going to play music with each other regardless. And if the four of us were going to make music together again it was only ever going to be as Avenged Sevenfold.”
Right now, the members of Avenged Sevenfold are back home with their loved ones in Huntingdon Beach, enjoying a rare week off; surfing, family barbecues and basketball games are the most pressing demands on their upcoming schedules. This time is precious, for soon enough the machine will crank into gear for Avenged once more. Last week, M. Shadows and his bandmates were in New York, overseeing the mixes of their sixth album with Andy Wallace (the veteran studio engineer whose credits include Slayer’s Reign In Blood, Nirvana’s Nevermind and Faith No More’s Angel Dust). And by the time you read this, the quintet (now rounded out by 25-year-old Californian drummer Arin Ilejay) will be back on the road once more for a series of US festival dates.
The sixth Avenged Sevenfold album, Hail To The King, is due for release later this summer. Recorded in Can-Am Studios in Tarzana, California with Nightmare producer Mike Elizondo, the album is set to feature 10 tracks and showcase a new darker, more mature sound for the Orange County quintet, one drawing upon the influence of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and classic metal acts of the 80s and 90s. On the evidence of the one track Hammer has heard so far – the punishing, dense, groove-laden title track – the album is set to confound expectations, for both fans and critics alike.
“With Nightmare, we travelled the world and shared our heartbreaking story about Jimmy and it was an ultimate test to what Avenged Sevenfold is,” says guitarist Zacky Vengeance. “Now is our time to step up to the next level and truly create a legacy.”
Nightmare was consciously designed as a tribute to The Rev, closing the book on the first decade of your career. Was there any point towards the end of the album cycle where you wondered if the Avenged Sevenfold adventure was over?
Zacky Vengeance: “The first show we played without The Rev was probably one of the most difficult things I’ve done in my entire life. When we walked onstage we could barely even play our instruments because we were shaking so badly. But we saw our fans and they were so supportive and in that moment we knew that we had an entirely new life for Avenged Sevenfold. We knew then that we had served a greater purpose, and that our time definitely hadn’t run out.”
Synyster Gates: “The last record is hard for any of us to listen to, friends and family included, because it speaks volumes to what we were feeling; there were no metaphors or analogies there masking that raw emotion. Now we want to make a globally gigantic record that communicates and speaks to the hard rock and metal youth of our time. And we feel we’ve achieved that.”
When did you get together to start writing again?
Johnny Christ: “In September 2012, right after my wedding [to childhood sweetheart Lacey Franklin]. It was a process that we knew was going to be a little more difficult without The Rev around, but I think the camaraderie that we always had with The Rev persevered through it. It put us in a place where we felt confident and comfortable with one another and in the studio.”
Zacky: “We were at home for several months doing nothing, trying to gain perspective on everything we’d done so far, and the whirlwind that had surrounded us after Jimmy passed. Everything happened so fast; it was so overwhelming so it was our chance to settle down and just try to be home, try to be friends, try to be real people. And also to give us the chance to reflect upon the music that we wanted to create.”
The word is that the new album is more classic rock oriented: Is Hail To The King indicative of the album at large?
Synyster: “Yeah, it’s definitely a song that we want to come out to say, ‘OK, buckle your fucking safety belts, this is what we’re doing now…’”
And what is that exactly?
Zacky: “An album that reflects everything we love about heavy metal and hard rock.”
M. Shadows: “And an album that’s probably going to appeal more to a guy who’s grown up listening to Metallica, AC/DC and Pantera than maybe our own fans right now. We feel that there was a big drop-off in metal after the 90s, and not enough kids have been brought up on the stuff that we grew up on, the true greats. I think that when our fans hear the record they’re going to say, ‘Wow, I get this, this may be better than what we’ve been listening to for the past 10 years.’ That’s our hope.”
That’s one hell of a mission statement.
Shadows: “Well, I don’t mind waving the flag. We really, truly, believe in metal – we grew up on the altar of bands like Maiden and Megadeth and Pantera and Metallica – and if bands that are younger could look up to us like that, that’d be the hugest compliment of all time. We want to headline Download. We want to play Rock In Rio. The goals aren’t to have million of dollars and sell millions of records, it’s to be the top of our game in our generation.”
Synyster: “Not to sound like a total dick, but there’s not a lot of bands that are ready to carry the torch. I honestly feel like we’re that band. When you start a band it’s totally all fun and games, and it’s all fun now, but there’s no more games. We’ve had fun, now we want to leave a mark. Now it’s ‘Let’s make history.’”
No band of your generation has yet stepped up to that mark. Why do you think there’s still a gaping gulf to the genuine superstar acts?
Synyster: “Without wishing to knock anyone, when you listen to a lot of the albums coming out, a lot of them just don’t have that classic quality. They just can’t hold a candle to songs like The Trooper or albums like The Black Album, or Led Zeppelin IV or Back In Black, albums that are filled to the brim with classic songs. To really write great songs you have to toil over your craft: you have to constantly evolve and remain a student of the craft and work very tenaciously. The amazing thing about the Metallicas and Iron Maidens is that they’re so timeless, they still resonate with the youth, and that’s fucking incredible. Those bands are still holding on to the torch, they’ve not passed it on. But I definitely feel that we’re heading their way.”
The music business is a different beast now than in the 80s, but do you have any theory why newer bands are still a step below?
Johnny: “I couldn’t tell you. There’s a lot of pieces to the puzzle and there’s no one way to get there. But you have to be real and you have to be confident in what you do. If you stay true to yourself and true to your fans and write the best music you can and really make the best live show you can, then that’s all you can do. I feel like we’ve been gearing up to take that step for that our whole lives.”
Fans get nervous about talk of change, particularly when they’ve yet to hear any of the new material…
Shadows: “I get that, because so many times you read bands talking about simplifying things when really what they’re talking about is making a sell-out record. We’re not simplifying things on this record to make a pop or radio record, not even close. We’ve taken everything to the extreme to make everything bigger and heavier.”
Zacky: “Earning respect from fans is the most difficult thing for a band and most bands never understand it. Bands can get defensive and pissed off when people called them pussies or sell-outs. When we started out we were young and wearing make-up and couldn’t understand why nobody treated us with respect; we couldn’t understand why we’d sold a million albums but when we went out to play a concert everyone stood there with their arms crossed. It took years for us to show that, hey, we’re not a made-up band trying to play metal; we grew up on this shit, we love metal and we’re in this for life. Avenged Sevenfold means more to us than our own lives.”
In the spring of 2010, just prior to the release of Nightmare, we sat down with the members of Avenged Sevenfold in a Newport Beach recording studio, to discuss a future as yet unwritten. Back then, conducting one of their first full interviews since the passing of The Rev, the band – normally so bullish and brash – were tentative, thoughtful and more than a little apprehensive as to the road ahead.
“Everything we do right now is under the microscope,” Zacky admitted nervously. “Every step we make is like walking through a minefield. Everyone is going to have an opinion based on every picture they see and every word they read.”
Three years on, it’s a very different picture. Talking to the band now, the dominant characteristic that infuses their conversation is a sense of fearlessness, a quiet determination to seize opportunities coming their way. There are still traces of the swagger and braggadocio which informed their early interviews and recordings, but overwhelmingly, there’s a sense that the lairy, cocksure teenagers who embarked upon their grand adventure back in ’99 have matured into rather decent, levelheaded young men. Shadows is now a father, his son River having turned one on July 8, and when he speaks about both the band’s new drummer Arin – “a young kid who grew up listening to Avenged Sevenfold: a great guy, very humble and one of those guys you can throw anything at and he can play it” – and indeed Avenged’s fans, he does so now with a paternalistic edge that’s touching to observe. One gets the sense that these young men are growing into their status as The Men Most Likely with a newfound sense of grace, authority and maturity.
You all grew up together. When you look back on yourselves as teenagers, what do you think has changed over the years?
Johnny: “Those teenagers are still my best friends and I still think we pretty much still act the same outside of our band. We’re still those 15-year-old kids, we’re maturing in our music but not necessarily in our minds!”
Zacky: “We can still be pretty fucking juvenile, believe me. But there’s a time for stupid shit and a time to step up.”
Is it important to you that Avenged become heroes for this generation of metal kids? Would you like to take on that mantle?
Shadows: “Well, to me, this record is going to elevate to that next level. Because we’re pulling from influences of when metal was in its heyday. To me that’s important, and it’s important maybe for our fans to go back and check out the bands who influenced us. We checked out the bands who influenced our favourite bands, so we got into UFO and Alice Cooper and AC/DC and Zeppelin because that’s who inspired our heroes. We wanted to make a record that’d stand up in the 90s but was made in 2013.”
Synyster: “Our fans are fucking diehard, and I know they’ll be with us all the way. It’s just a question if we’ve got the songs to attract a billion more of them. Everyone wants to be the biggest band in the world, and that’s what we’re investing in, but our first goal is to get our music out to the kids we’ve grown with, who’ve grown to love us.”
Zacky: “It’s always scary, because with every new album there’s people who’re going to be expecting more out of you, and you know that some of those people are going to be disappointed and some of those people now have a different new favourite band than you. You have to set all that aside and focus upon what album is in your heart. Nobody stresses about it more than us!”
Representing metal for a new generation seems like almost a personal mission for you now…
Zacky: “Oh, absolutely. We’ve always mixed styles, incorporating thrash parts and ballads and shredding and groove parts, but this time around we consolidated everything and honed everything into something that we all love. Metal is meant to be heavy and loud and it’s meant to be played live, it’s meant to be music to blow shit up to. Ultimately it’s more powerful than any other music in the world. The new album is everything that we love about heavy metal, and about why it’s so powerful to us, and what it is that made us want to devote ourselves to playing it, fighting every day against negative connotations. So fuck yes it’s personal!”
You’ve a UK tour coming in November [2013]. Hearing that you’ve sold out 60% of Wembley Arena in an hour must be gratifying after your time away?
Johnny: “Yeah, it definitely put a smile on all of our faces when we got that news. We’re really excited to come back over. To headline a room of that size is a serious and very awesome accomplishment for this band.”
Synyster: “Yeah, we’ve been on cloud nine as the ticket sales have come in. It’s like, ‘Yay, they haven’t forgotten us, fuck yeah!’”
Does it feel like some of the weight that surrounded Nightmare has been lifted now? Are Avenged Sevenfold in a brighter place right now?
Shadows: “For me, I’m going to carry that weight for the rest of my life. But I don’t think that the band needs to carry that weight forever. I think now it’s time to celebrate Jimmy’s life and vision, and it’s also time to move forward and do what we do, especially in terms of lyrics and the vibe, because I think that’s what Jimmy would want. Nightmare was a one-off thing where something terrible happened to us, and we needed to vent it, emotionally, in that weighty sort of way, but now it’s time to get back to what Avenged Sevenfold does best. We’re feeling strong and healthy and we feel it’s our time now.”
Originally published in Metal Hammer issue
ON THE RISE
It was the beginning of 1996 when an up and coming alternative group called the Smashing Pumpkins set out on a global run in support of their latest release, “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.” One of the earliest dates brought them to Los Angeles for a packed performance at the legendary Palace Theatre, where fans filled the venue wall to wall. Instead of opening with the loud, abrasive energy that dominated alternative rock the year before, the band surprised everyone by beginning with a quiet piano performance.
The song was the album’s title track, a deeply reflective piece filled with emotion, optimism and the feeling of stepping into a new chapter. Billy Corgan, who was 28 at the time, wrote it while teaching himself how to play piano.
Corgan recalls the moment feeling almost unreal, surrounded by the Palace Theatre’s velvet drapes, the gentle melody and the overwhelming excitement from the crowd. Then everything erupted as pounding drums and roaring guitars crashed into the room, fully introducing the massive soundscape of “Mellon Collie.”
Three decades later, “Mellon Collie” is widely viewed as one of the defining rock records of the 1990s, later inspiring artists such as Muse, My Chemical Romance and Silversun Pickups. The album marked a dramatic turning point for the band, who had previously become known for the dreamy, progressive leaning sound of their 1993 breakthrough “Siamese Dream.” Unlike that record, “Mellon Collie” arrived as an ambitious concept double album, with lyrics tracing a journey that Corgan described as “one day that can represent your entire life.”
Throughout that concept, the record shifts through crushing and emotional examinations of rage and identity on tracks like “Muzzle,” “Zero” and “Bullet With Butterfly Wings,” nostalgic and delicate moments in “Cupid De Locke” and “Thirty-Three,” and themes of youth and romance in “1979” and “Love.” Its enormous range in both storytelling and musical direction made it stand apart from other rock albums of its era, abandoning the detached attitude often associated with grunge in favor of sincerity, emotion and experimentation.
Taking cues from Pink Floyd’s “The Wall,” the noisy textures of Sonic Youth, the symbolic songwriting and layered arrangements of Black Sabbath, along with surreal visual art influences, “Mellon Collie” pushed the Smashing Pumpkins further than ever before. The album challenged the group to discover how far they could stretch creatively and how completely they could capture human emotion within a single project.
To celebrate the album’s 30th anniversary, the band has partnered with the Lyric Opera of Chicago, their hometown orchestra, to reinterpret “Mellon Collie” as an opera production. They are also releasing the album again alongside previously unheard recordings from the 1996 “Infinite Sadness” tour. Featuring performances from Los Angeles to Philadelphia, the recordings preserve the intensity of the live shows and document a defining chapter in the band’s story.
In “Tonight, Tonight,” Corgan reflects, “And our lives are forever changed, we will never be the same.”
Looking back at the legacy of “Mellon Collie,” those lyrics feel hauntingly accurate. “Nothing was quite the same after this album,” Corgan told the Times. In many ways, that statement could not be more true.
The album earned seven Grammy nominations and launched the band into another level of fame through massive MTV exposure and a series of enduring hit singles. Away from the spotlight, however, Corgan was struggling through the collapse of his first marriage. During the tour, growing tensions inside the group eventually exploded following the overdose death of touring keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin. Later that same year, Corgan also lost his mother.
What followed “Mellon Collie” and the turbulent 1996 tour was a period filled with instability and upheaval. Yet within the life of the album itself existed a rare moment where Corgan and the Smashing Pumpkins came together in complete creative harmony to make a record that would ultimately shape their careers and, in many ways, the course of their lives.
Something I really love, especially about the piano and “Tonight, Tonight” as the opening track, is this feeling of hope that it starts off with, or maybe that’s just what I got from it.
[Laughs] It starts with hope and ends somewhere else, let’s put it that way.
What was the intention with starting with this feeling and what was it inspired by at the time?
I was going through a lot in my personal life, and I was grappling with the changes in my life and the awareness that I had in my life, given what I’d been through as a child and now as an adult with success, it was like I was trying to grapple with all that and wondering what really matters.
I think if you look at the general narrative of the album, it starts with the idea and it starts with the dream and what is possible within the dream. So, for example, you pointed to the piano piece that opens the record.
I went to a store, not too far from where I’m sitting and talking to you [he was calling from his car in Chicago], and bought an old 1920s piano with mismatched legs for $2,500. Now that may not seem like a big deal, but at 27 years old, when I was writing the record, I never owned a piano nor was I allowed to play a piano in my relatives’ houses.
So I finally had this moment of, wow, I can actually buy a piano and I can play my own piano in my own house. As silly as that sounds, it had never crossed my mind that way. I’d always lived in apartments and I was always on the road. It was like a new beginning. It starts with the gift that I gave myself and that ends up having a lot of influence on the compositional structure of the record.
And then “Tonight, Tonight,” was a song that we messed around with for about four months. And one night it just came to me in a flash, like what the song needed to sound like, and I went upstairs to this room that I had in my house and I just remember playing it like I could hear the whole orchestra in my head and I thought, OK, that’s what I need to do.
Something I see on this new reissue is that there’s going to be a lot of recordings from that live 1996 tour right after the release of the album. What was it like relistening to these performances, especially as it was the last tour with the band’s full original lineup?
We had crested a particular wave at the time. We had a No. 1 album. We were playing, I think, a 90-date arena tour, which, now there’s a ton of artists playing stadiums, but back then an arena show was essentially the top of the mountain. So then we had success, we had fame, we had money that we’d never had.
With that, we had all the trappings. And I think in the recordings that are on this record that’s coming out, it’s like a light burning bright before it burns out. If you’ve ever had that experience, you’re in a room and all of a sudden the lightbulb gets really intense and then it burns out. So, you hear us basically burning out.
And there’s a sort of incandescent poetic beauty to all that, and there’s just the sorrow to it because you also realize it’s the last of that moment. In many ways, it was truly the end of that band. I mean, yes, the band has continued, and James [Iha] and Jimmy [Chamberlin] and I have been playing back together again for seven years, and released more records and had a tremendous amount of success of late.
But you can never recapture the innocence of youth or the innocence of the time. When you combine those types of experiences with loss and sorrow and the knowledge of what didn’t happen or what could have happened, then it makes revisiting this time bittersweet.
What do you think “Mellon Collie” means today and how has it been for you to see younger generations continue to be inspired by it?
I view that album in particular very much within the realm of a child who grows up in a latchkey situation. It’s very much a Gen X term. Latchkey kids were those whose parents were working a lot or not home, so they grew up by and large unsupervised. So what does a kid who grows up unsupervised do? They watched a lot of television, and then we consumed a lot of sugar and got up to a lot of delinquent-type things.
So I think the album is very representative of that experience and I think why it continues to resonate for subsequent generations is, it’s very dissociative. Back in the ’90s, the mainstream culture, including the L.A. Times and the New York Times, they really struggled with, “Where’s this all coming from?” Now you are living in a world that is constantly dissociative thanks to social media.
The thing that’s surprising, I’m basing it on personal conversations I’ve had with tons of musicians through the years, is that our album gave some musicians the permission to pursue a wider artistic vision. Because “Mellon Collie” is so wide. It has so much breadth. So what I’ve heard from other artists is, “Wow, when I heard that album, I thought, I can do this too, but in my own way.” And that to me is like, that’s a penultimate compliment from another musician. It’s really humbling.
The greatest thrill now is seeing that young people really do connect with the record. And they connect with songs that are different from the previous generations, which is even cooler. They seem to like the weirder stuff on it rather than the ... let’s call it, the classic rock alternative stuff.
That’s a cool way of looking at it. Like the previous generation probably was really obsessed with “Bullet With Butterfly Wings,” and maybe newer listeners aren’t as focused on that song specifically. In that song, it’s interesting that you say, “Can you fake it for just one more show?” Or this feeling of putting on a performance and feeling that you have to fake it as an artist. Is that something that still resonates with you?
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Because you work so hard to be on that stage and then, as Roger Waters so aptly describes in “The Wall,” you find yourself having a surrealist experience on that same stage. You put yourself through hell to get there and then one day you’re standing there and you’re like, what am I doing here?
I’ve had similar moments where I’m standing on stage and you feel like you’re tripping on drugs, but you’re totally sober. Because the thing that you love inverts on you. When I was a kid, I thought being on TV was a peak thing. But then I was there, about to perform on TV, and there were all these things going on, like you’re tired, or you’re being sued or your bandmate doesn’t like the deli tray. And I just thought, what am I doing here? I felt like I was living in “Spinal Tap.” This is supposed to be fun. This is supposed to be glamorous. This is supposed to be a thousand other things that you put on the rock-star checklist and you find yourself saying, I don’t want to be here.
If you turn to your friends or your family and say, “I’m really struggling with how I’m supposed to process the information that I’m receiving up here,” you’re told you’re ungrateful or you’re out of your mind or you really need to check your ego. I reached a point where it was like, no, I don’t have the skill set to survive punishing my mind, body, spirit five to six nights a week in front of strangers singing songs that are very personal to me and I hear the cheering and I see the flash bulbs popping, but I’m so numb that I can’t feel what’s happening. So in a lot of ways, that song and the themes from the album are still real.
You’ve said in the “Mellon Collie” sessions, you guys were working on 50 songs at once, that you’re working for six hours a day, just really intense in the studio. What are your thoughts as you think back to that? Were there any memories that really arise for you?
Despite our public persona of being dysfunctional and brawling, we were quite quiet in the rehearsal space. We almost never had guests and 97% of the time, it was just the four of us in a room working.
So, the real memory for me is just day after day after day of trying tons and tons of different ideas, and it started to wind itself into a story through those 60-plus songs, many of which came out in those few years. It was our best period of musical alignment and I think you can hear that. We worked very hard and very peacefully together for eight months to put all that together.
We had just come off a tour, “Siamese Dream,” which was a 14-month tour, and we went in the studio for eight months, made the “Mellon Collie” record, and we immediately went back on tour. And that tour was 22 months long. So when you ask my memory from that time, it’s like, can you describe the blur? It was a really beautiful blur, you know?
You said something really interesting earlier about “Tonight, Tonight” coming to you with the sound of an orchestra. Talk about what it was like to see that song and this album come to life as an opera with Chicago Lyric.
The idea that I would even not only write something on the piano, and now, a full orchestra is playing that song here in Chicago with the lyrics I wrote ... is totally mind-blowing. The first time I heard it with an orchestra, I started to cry, because I thought, this is so crazy. This song that I used to teach myself how to play the piano was now being played by some of the greatest musicians in the world in this beautiful opera hall. I can’t explain to you the strangeness of that journey.
I was made fun of [for using classical instruments in ’90s rock music]. It was seen as too precocious or too artsy or too, I don’t know, overly grand. And now, if you look at alternative music, I mean, there’s been an absolute explosion of people using unconventional instrumentation within the breath of alternative music, as it should be. So it makes me laugh now that there was a time where somehow that was pseudo-controversial.
Coming to my last question for you, how did this album impact your life 30 years later and impact your artistry?
After putting out something like this, artistically it was a triumph. But then publicly it became surreal. We hit a level where people were following you through malls and we were on MTV. It’s not like we had not tasted success, but this was this other stratospheric aspect of success. And something about that album just kind of blew everything wide open.
Family relationships, personal relationships, business relationships, everything just kind of went sideways. I remember thinking nothing was quite the same after that album. Which is true, but it’s not true the way you think it is.
The album has never left my life and is never far away from the conversation. It was never like I put it down and left it behind. Other people won’t let me forget and that’s a good thing because the value holds, and I’ll never forget about it.
