Perhaps the Huntington Beach, Calif., native is being too modest. After all, his group scored a crossover hit in 2005 with “Bat Country” (whose “Fear and Loathing”–style video inexplicably wound up as a favorite on MTV’s teenybopper “TRL” countdown) and his band’s latest, self-titled record debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard top albums chart.
Then again, Avenged Sevenfold really isn’t for everyone. The group’s throwback metal sound (Guns ‘N Roses mixed with a bit of Iron Maiden), decadent lifestyle (strippers! drugs! porn stars!) and in-your-face political views (think a more Libertarian Dick Cheney) have sometimes overshadowed or even thwarted the band’s success.
Here, A7X’s frontman discusses his band’s true intentions, their unusual fanbase and why other groups need to just shut the hell up. Oh, and why one of their new songs sounds like a Broadway number…
The band plays the Rockstar Taste of Chaos Tour on Friday at the UCF Arena in Orlando.
There’s a really ambitious, almost musical theater number near the end of your album called “A Little Bit of Heaven.” That song’s quite a departure.
Most of the stuff we listen to is kind of “out there”—the Residents, Mr. Bungle, Sparks, Danny Elfman soundtracks. We threw the rulebook away when we wrote this record. We write what we want to hear, and not a lot of bands do that. Too many bands want to be “accepted.” On that song, our drummer the Rev came up with 99 percent of it. He started laying it down in the studio, just using one finger on a piano. Then we hired a bunch of former Oingo Boingo members who work with Danny Elfman to help out with the choir and string arrangements. Then I got drunk and threw my vocals on top of it.
Can you play it live?
Yeah, we’ll use ProTools and strip down the song a bit. Maybe for big shows we’ll hire some more people, but I don’t see how we could get 30 musicians on stage every night.
You guys self-produced the record. Was that the choice from the beginning?
We’ve kind of produced our own stuff in the past. We know our way around the studio. But the producer is an important person. The problem was we didn’t click with anyone except [frequent Green Day producer] Rob Cavallo, and he was too busy with the Kid Rock record. We’re not dumb—a sixth person in the studio would be smart. But we had this great meeting as a band about doing this on our own, and since we’ve all grown up together, it wasn’t a problem doing it ourselves. Everyone took their compliments and complaints well. But it’s the writing that’s the hard part anyway…once you get into a studio and put a mic on a guitar, you’re going to catch the raw essence of the band.
A lot has been made of the band’s extracurricular activities—strippers, drugs, general debauchery. Is it all true?
We have a really good time. But the big article about us that people keep going back to happened at the end of our last tour, and it was in Vegas. It was a wild and crazy night, which everyone is allowed to have. But seriously, the guy writing about us was doing drugs! Anyway, this band is really not out of control. We take the music seriously. We’re five best friends, and along with our crew, we usually just get some beers at the end of each show. Normal stuff.
“Critical Acclaim,” the opening track on your new record, is pretty vicious. And, for being political, it presents a point of view starkly different from your contemporaries.
Every morning, I read the L.A. Times or Orange County Register, and I’m bombarded with liberal things I don’t agree with. I love the middle of the country—I don’t agree with everything that’s said or done there either, but I think people need to leave them alone. But take the punk band NOFX—we love them, they’re friends of ours. But what they say…I think this song is a backlash on those bands and their extreme liberal philosophies. I’m supporting the people who grow our crops and defend our country. It’s the opposite point of view from every musician I know.
You guys grew up more in the punk community, but you seem to be considered more of a metal band now. Where does your audience fall?
It’s been crazy. Like, this tour, our shows have been different every night. If I went to a Slayer show, I’d know their fan base. But we’re a mixture of everyone—we get fan girls who saw us on “TRL,” but also parents, porn stars, metalheads and everyone else in-between.
What about growing up in Huntington Beach led to your sound?
It’s really laid back there. It’s given us an attitude about our band. We feel very free to come up with our own sound. I mean, country is big where we’re from, and so is hip-hop and metal. And punk—I remember going to punk shows as a kid where bands would rent out the local library. After I left California for the first time, I was surprised that bands like Pennywise and NOFX weren’t the hugest bands in the world, because they were so big in our area.
Do you have a dream tour?
Well, we’ve played with Metallica, and with Guns 'N Roses, and they’ve been great to us, so…I don’t know. There’s no point in being an opening band at this point. We’re carving out our own niche.
