Everyone knows Mike Portnoy's reputation. He's a great drummer, and he helped us out in a great time of need. He really helped us get back underneath our feet and continue this band.
When you're concentrating on just the music, you're not thinking about anything else.
The fans have always been die-hard and awesome. That's why we do a lot of the things we do.
These fans are the reason why we're here. They're awesome and very crazy. They love Avenged Sevenfold, and we love them. Having that is rare.
We have a song, 'Welcome to the Family' - we realized for the first time in our lives that people go through this every day around the world. There is someone very close to them that they're losing, every day. That song is, 'We know how you're feeling.'
We were very proud of everything that we accomplished with 'Hail To The King,' but when it was time to write a new record, it was like, 'Well, we accomplished that. Let's see what else we can do,' and took it to the next level.
We've always kind of tried to keep the mystique. We don't wanna give everybody everything. You give 'em too much, it's just white noise. When we do say something, we want it to be an event. When we go out and do things, we want it to be an event and kind of keep everything else behind closed doors.
When I got into songs like 'Exist,' I was like, 'Okay, this riff has some bass sweeping in it, I'm definitely going to have to use a pick... but I guess I'll have to learn how to sweep first!'
We wanted to do something different and have a surprise release. At first, naturally, the label was getting a little scared about that, because they wanna sell records, and a surprise release means it might not go as quickly.
The importance of first-week sales has kind of diminished, in our opinion, in the industry, and we don't really know what it really means anymore. It is what it is in the industry. And for us, it's all about the endgame, not where it begins.
Everyone has their own opinions, and they're entitled to them.
We've never been shy to admit that Metallica is a huge influence in our lives and on our music.
If we're compared to Metallica, the greatest metal band in the world, I think that's actually a pretty damn good compliment.
I just don't have time to really sit there and worry about someone disliking what we put so much effort into.
We're always trying to do something better than the last record; to do something different and evolve as a band.
We all listen to a lot of eclectic things.
Every riff had to be perfect and heavy, collectively what we wanted it to be. If there was one person in the room who went, 'Heh, I don't think it is there yet, guys,' we'd scrap the whole song. I think that took a little bit of songwriting maturity for us.
