M. SHADOWS: Freshman year, when we were fifteen or sixteen, we burned down a school that we can’t name because we could still get in trouble for it. We did millions of dollars of damage. We were fucking around and burning shit, drinking underneath the fucking school, just being assholes. And we set some shit on fire. All of a sudden it’s out of control. So, we’re like, “Okay, we gotta go now.” As we’re leaving, you hear the fucking fire engines. We were like, “Dude, we can’t shake this. They’re gonna catch us!”
THE REV: At school I was kind of bragging about it. Then someone in my school said it was me.
M. SHADOWS: The cops came to the Rev’s house, but he got out of it. One time before, when we stole stuff, I told the cops, “Hey, I didn’t really steal stuff. I just told everyone I did because I wanted them to think I was cool.” So the Rev did the same thing. He said, “No, we didn’t really burn down the school. We just said we did.” It was scary, but they let him off.
SYNYSTER GATES: Before we started the band, we all had crazy long nights of binge drug using and excess drinking—just thinking you’re gonna die. You’ve been up for a fucking day and a half and you just can’t go to bed even though it’s been a while since you’ve slept, and you’re having heart seizures and panic attacks. I think we’ve learned our limitations and have a good time now. Me and the Rev and Zack used to do a lot of fucking coke. If I ever thought of doing as much coke now, I would freak out. But you’re young, you’re naïve, and you don’t know the repercussions. You keep going more and more and more until finally you fuck yourself up. Then you fuck yourself up twice, and then you start to learn. I had a bad incident with shrooms where I puked up a lot of blood. I was passing out and my friends had to keep me awake. I’ve woken up after puking in my sleep and that’s not cool either. But that only happened when I was really, really young. I’ve calmed down a lot since then.
M. SHADOWS: When you’re growing up and going to the bar and your friend is the bartender and there’s blow on the fucking bar every night and there are shrooms and GHB and it’s do-whatever-you-want-and-everything’s-free all-night and you have no responsibilities, well that’s a different story. But that’s not our situation now. We play shows every night and the people that come are paying money to see a good show. We don’t want to go on wasted and be all sloppy. We want to impress them.
THE REV: I’ve been in county jail twice, dog. Two years of probation for armed robbery, which I plea bargained. We robbed a store and the security guard jumped onto the car. We drove away with the security guard hanging half out of the car, trying to make us stop. The cops threatened us with attempted manslaughter, but it didn’t stick. Other times I had minor offenses for fights and drinking in public. The most I ever got was a week. You never appreciate anything more than when you get out of jail. You’re like, “Shit, I can walk around for 5 feet if I want to or fucking go get some cigarettes.”
Considering their reckless, fast-paced childhoods, it’s a minor miracle that Avenged Sevenfold were able to focus long enough to learn to play, form a band, write songs, and practice. As it turned out, music was their salvation, and their love for gigging equaled their penchant for partying. From the start they were convinced that if they became a killer band, stardom would follow. So they took their music incredibly seriously, analyzing each riff, taking every opportunity to adapt and improve. At first they tried to fit into the Orange County scene by playing blazing Eighteen Visions–style metalcore seasoned with guitar ripping solos. Around the same time, Eighteen Visions was trying to break out of the metalcore mold, integrating more hard rock elements into its music, ironically paving the way for Atreyu and Avenged Sevenfold.
JAMES HART: There were straight-up rock riffs on [2000’s] Until the Ink Runs Out and nobody batted an eyelash because there was screaming over it. Once we made a couple albums, we decided to emphasize the melodic guitar parts and rock-oriented songs. I started developing my voice and we explored some of our more melodic ideas. That started on [2002’s] Vanity and got more pronounced on [2004’s] Obsession. And the hardcore kids gave us hell for it.
M. SHADOWS: When we first started [in 1999], we were really young and we wanted to do a mix of punk and metal, and it came off as metalcore. After that, everyone jumped on the bandwagon.
ZACKY VENGEANCE: When you’ve got a dollar-a-day food budget, life’s hard, but we were always focused to take over the world. We went through more self-bought fog machines than any band in the history of music. In the beginning, we’d put on another band’s shirt that we toured with because we could get them for free. We’d be the opening band on a hardcore bill playing in front of ten kids and playing through all this fog. Maybe the ten kids hated our guts and laughed. But fuck them. Look at what we’re doing now. They can suck my dick.
At its peak, the metalcore movement most closely resembled the thrash metal scene. With the exception of the straight-edge bands, there was plenty of drinking and tomfoolery, and while the shows could get violent, the crowds were usually not mean-spirited. Of course, there were exceptions.
BRANDAN SCHIEPPATI: We were playing a floor show in Long Island and this kid broke his leg in the pit. He just lay there and he was still singing along and people were moshing over him and he refused to be moved. He was there for two songs before he let the paramedics take him out.
MATT BACHAND: In 2003, Shadows Fall did the Headbangers Ball Tour, which was a triple-headliner with Lamb of God and Killswitch. Unearth and God Forbid were the support bands. That was the tour where Adam D. got drunk and shot some bottle rockets out of his ass in the parking lot of the Alrosa Villa in Columbus, Ohio. That year we also did [the second stage of] Ozzfest with Killswitch, and one day we painted Adam like Paul Stanley. Everyone else in Killswitch just looked defeated. He came off our bus like that right before the show, and they all groaned.
BRANDAN SCHIEPPATI: Bleeding Through did the Headbangers Ball Tour 2004 and it was a disaster. A couple of our friends got in a fight and there were security guards in the middle, and one of the guards pulled out a knife and stabbed two of my friends. One was in critical condition and had to get surgery. We got fuckin’ blamed for it and almost got kicked off the tour.
BRIAN FAIR: Those summer tours like Ozzfest are crazy because your day is done so early that you don’t know what to do with yourself. And all your alcoholic friends are there. So they’re all enabling you and even if you’re just like, “Okay, let’s take the day off drinking,” you run into your friends from Arch Enemy, and you’re like, “Oh, well. Time for some liver pushups and 12-ounce curls.” There was one show on the King Diamond tour and our old drummer imbibed a bit too much and he was playing with his eyes closed; when you’re a drummer that’s not a very good thing to do. There’s a video of it on YouTube, and you can hear him hitting the microphone.
ADAM DUTKIEWICZ: One of my favorite tours was Ozzfest with Cradle of Filth, because I got on really well with [keyboardist] Martin Powell, who also liked a bit of the drink. One night I saw him in the parking lot throwing up through a traffic cone. I told him I would give him a dollar if he picked up his vomit and ate it and he agreed. That was disgusting. That was the same tour where he and I ended up drinking so much that I wound up not being able to play half the set. I was just on the ground. And by the time he got onstage directly after us, he passed out on his keyboard. You just hear this sustained note over the speakers, and they had to drag him out. The Cradle guys were pretty upset about that.
MIKE D’ANTONIO: Adam took a golf cart with Matt [DeVries, guitarist] from Chimaira and one of the guys from Cradle of Filth, and they were driving around the parking lot, drinking and knocking over trash cans. When you’re on a golf cart it seems like it’s going super fast, but when you watch it, it looks like you’re moving in slow motion. So they’re having this great time running over things and all of the bands are watching them and laughing. And they decide to drive over this table that kind of looks like a ramp, but they miss it, and two wheels go up on the t
able and then it flips the entire golf cart on its head. Adam has his beer and he’s hanging on to it, and even with the flip, he doesn’t spill a drop. The roll cage landed on his arm and he still had the beer upright. They pushed the golf cart over and he just started drinking again.
MICK MORRIS: In 2004, we played a skate park in a really bad part of Buffalo with the German band Caliban, Scars of Tomorrow, Evergreen Terrace, and It Dies Today. After the show, we were all hanging out at 2 a.m., talking, packing up our trailers, and this car sped through the little alley we were in. One of the dudes tapped the car, like, “Hey, slow down.” Ten minutes later we see ten teenage kids walking towards us. They said, “Yo, who the fuck hit my mom’s car?” They were these little black gangbangers and they had no fear. They probably had knives or guns. I was telling everyone, “Let’s just pack up and leave.” The singer of Evergreen Terrace said something and somebody threw a punch and it turned into a massacre. The guys from Caliban jumped in their van and took off and the rest of us were punching out all these kids in this dark alley, half expecting to get shot or stabbed. A week later, we got an e-mail from the principal of the school where these kids went, saying one of the kids got his head split all the way open and they’re gonna take us to court, and possibly jail.
JAMES HART: We were out with Killswitch Engage in 2004 right in between Vanity and Obsession. I was signing autographs and some guy was like, “Hey, will you sign my ticket?” I’m like, “Sure man.” He rips his ticket up and throws it at me and says, “I fuckin’ hate your band. You guys suck.” Imagine having fifteen or twenty of your fans waiting in line and seeing somebody disrespect you like that. I went after him and got surrounded by him and five of his bigger buddies.
MICK MORRIS: The five guys dumped beer on James’s head and he literally fought them all and destroyed them.
BRANDAN SCHIEPPATI: We were in Calgary with Cradle of Filth, and I was down in the pit with [Seattle metal band] Himsa trying to get the crowd going and get the guys the love they deserved. This guy kept grabbing my hood and pushing me. I was like, “Okay, whatever. I don’t really care about your pit beef.” So I pushed him away and said, “Fuck off.” He did it again and I threw a left at him and knocked him out. It was meant to get him the hell away from me, but he went down on the ground. It was funny because his friends looked at me and said to him, “That’s the singer of Bleeding Through.” He came up to me after the show and said, “Oh, I’m so sorry I did that. I love you guys.” I said, “Well, I’m sorry I punched you.”
The turning point in metalcore history came with Avenged Sevenfold’s 2005 album, City of Evil, which marked the band’s total departure from the scene. They abandoned harrowing screams in favor of powerful singing, and went for classic rock, metal, and prog riffs in lieu of hardcore-based rhythms, unleashing infectious rockers like “Bat Country” and “Beast and the Harlot” as well as ballads like “Seize the Day.” With strong support from their label, Warner Bros., City of Evil steadily gained steam, and in January 2006, about six months after its release, the album went gold. In August 2009 it sold platinum, garnering one million in U.S. sales, the largest number of any modern Orange County band. By that time 2003’s Waking the Fallen and 2007’s Avenged Sevenfold had also gone gold. The next most popular metalcore act was Killswitch Engage, whose 2004 album, The End of Heartache, and 2006’s As Daylight Dies have both gone gold.
JAMES HART: I’ve always liked Avenged Sevenfold, even when they were the punching bags of that world. I never looked at them as a hardcore band. I saw them more like a metal punk band, but they were always something different. And they brought different people to the shows that your typical hardcore kid didn’t like—guys that just wanted to surf and party. Those dudes didn’t really mix well with your stuck-up straight-edge hardcore kids back then.
JAMEY JASTA: In one of the first Avenged videos, the main character is wearing a Hatebreed shirt. That was really smart because it showed how different walks of life were into their music. They had the hardcore kids and the Guns N’ Roses fans. They showcased their talent in their music with these amazing guitar parts and went on to incorporate clean singing, which is always going to take you places.
M. SHADOWS: When we were doing [2005’s] City of Evil, all we were listening to was Sonata Arctica, a European power metal band, and Blind Guardian and Queen, where it’s all built around pop melodies with lots of backup vocals. Musically it’s more of a Pantera-, Metallica-, Iron Maiden-type thing. That’s what we were going for, and to be completely honest, we knew it was going to be more commercial. We changed our sound because we wanted to play the kind of music we liked, but we were smart enough to want to be accessible for people. We knew the metalcore thing had a cap on it. But the funny thing is, Warner Bros. wanted us to do a metalcore record because major labels like to jump on the bandwagon. Thrice was signed and Thursday, so Warner Bros. was like, “Well we got Avenged Sevenfold.” Then we were like, “Okay, but we’re not gonna give you that type of record.” So at first it was kind of weird for them.
ZACKY VENGEANCE: We’ve always looked at things as us versus everyone else and we’ll take our fans along for the ride. We’re determined to be the biggest thing out there. There’s a lot of people that don’t see our vision and try to fuck with us, be it the press or label people who don’t care about us. We could be the happiest guys in the world, and as soon as somebody tries to cross us we’ll bite their heads off because we’ve worked too hard for years to make this thing work.
M. SHADOWS: We met [Pantera’s] Vinnie Paul in Dallas and he came up to us and said, “Hey, I was driving from Dallas to Vegas, and I heard your shit on the radio and I dug it so much I went right out and bought it. Your drummer is killer. He stole some of my chops, but that’s okay.” Then we met [Pantera bassist] Rex Brown after our show in Irvine, California. He said, “You guys are waving the flag of metal now. Fucking run with it, dude.”
DAVE PETERS: At first when I saw those bands blowing up I felt this combination of disbelief and envy. I went, “Fuck, these guys are doing so well.” At that time, we didn’t see their music for what it was so it was easier to write it off. Then when you step back and really look at it you go, “That band is big because those dudes can write circles around most people in Orange County. They’re these phenomenal musicians.”
Avenged Sevenfold doesn’t have a slogan, but if it did it would be: “work hard, play hard.” Guitarists Zacky Vengeance and Synyster Gates hone their chops for hours at a time, and M. Shadows spent a mint on vocal training with one of the best coaches in the business. They continue to play concerts sober and are reliable about making promotional appointments. But when their work is done for the day, Avenged Sevenfold like to let loose. They drink heavily; they’ve experimented with pills, acid, and coke; they gamble; they visit strip clubs; and they have gotten involved in messy brawls. At times, especially around the City of Evil era, it looked like their appetite for destruction just might take them out.
M. SHADOWS: The last time we got into a bar fight we were just sitting there drinking and some asshole goes, “If I don’t get a drink in the next five minutes, I’m gonna punch the next person that walks in the door.” So he doesn’t get his drink and my friend walks in, so the guy shoves my friend. The Rev walks up with a beer bottle and just, boom! across the guy’s face. All I remember is kneeing someone in the face over and over and not stopping.
JOHNNY CHRIST (Avenged Sevenfold): I got arrested for a DUI in 1994. I had just bought my Crown Victoria and I went out. I wasn’t planning on going anywhere. I just had a bottle of Jack sitting next to me and I was drinking, watching TV, and a friend came over. I had just got back from a tour. So I showed him the car and I was drinking some more. I ended up blacking out. And for whatever reason, I wanted to go for a spin. Next thing I know, I wake up and I’ve driven my car underneath a parked Dodge pickup truck. I found out later I had put the pedal all the way down and at the last second I fishtailed and went right underneath the t
ruck. So I’m trying to back out and this guy runs out in his underwear and starts screaming. I tried settling it, but there was already a cop there. I went to jail and had a pretty hefty fine.
SYNYSTER GATES: People are saying we’re the next Mötley Crüe. They say our way of life is over-the-top and crazy, but to us their way of life is pretty crazy—to not be human and indulge in things when you want to do them. People are animals. We like to explore and we’re daring, and to stifle that is unnatural.
ROXANA SHIRAZI (groupie, writer): [One time], Synyster put down his beer and unzipped his heavy metal pants, full of chains, studs, and assorted accessories. He unleashed his hot pee like a fountain all over my breasts. I held my head back to expose my neck. [Back on the band’s bus] the Rev tried to fuck me. M. Shadows watched. When Synyster showed up, though, the Rev’s dick died. He kept trying to fuck, but his dick was spaghetti limp. He tried to shove it in again and again. Because of all the chemical substances he’d consumed, he began foaming at the mouth. All of a sudden, his face went pale and twisted in deranged psychosis, and he slammed me onto the ground. I hit my head, then stood back up in a daze. I was angry, but mostly because I hadn’t gotten proper sex.
SYNYSTER GATES: When we went to Atlantic City on the City of Evil tour there were a couple of girls we met at our meet-and-greet. We were supposed to play strip poker, and while we were there, we got a little crazy. We filled up a bucket with urine and dumped it all over one of the girls and she was freaking out. She was soaked head to toe in the band’s urine. So Johnny said, “Don’t worry, baby. It’s just alcohol.” So she picks up a bottle of Patrón [tequila] and says, “I can’t believe you wasted this bottle of Patrón on me.” We’re just busting out because she’s covered with piss.
THE REV: We had a day off in New Mexico [in 2006] and there was nothing to do, so me and [guitarist] Zacky [Vengeance] were drinking. It was just me and him in the bathroom at this tequila bar. We got drunk to the point where it felt like we were on crazy drugs because it was, like, 100 degrees outside and we were out of our minds. So Zack thought it was fuckin’ hilarious to start pissing on the floor. I was like, “Yea-eah!” I fuckin’ dropped to my knees and started fuckin’ lickin’ it up.
Louder Than Hell: The Definitive Oral History of Metal Page 60
