Zacky Vengeance

When we were trying to come up with a concept for our music video for 'The Stage' we basically run through a lot of different ideas, and ultimately, I sat and studied the lyrics that Matt had written - and they really resonated with me.

We've never tried to write radio hits. If I hear our song on the radio, it's cool, and I'm proud, but it's never a goal.

I worked a lot on our album cover, and I didn't just want to post it on our website one day and move on. We wound up breaking it into 18 pieces and hiding them on fan sites all over the Internet and then posting clues, so fans could put together the puzzle.

Everyone likes to have fun. But when I look back on my life, I'm not going to say, 'Oh, we're the crazy party animals.' I'll look back and say, 'Wow, we did take this seriously.' We had fun while we were out doing it, but it's just the only thing you read about: 'They're a bunch of party animals.' To be honest, that's not true.

We're not a Screamo band.

We had to take full advantage of the fact that we wanted to be one of the most creative bands out there that's getting backed by one of the biggest companies.

I have no formal guitar training whatsoever, so it's been fun learning sweep-picking techniques. Working on these types of licks has thrown a whole new collection of tricks into the mix.

With every album, I write above my ability, and my job as a guitarist is to catch up and be able to play it live. The thing about practicing is that once you master something, you don't have to remaster it. You just keep moving forward.

I think the most important thing to putting on a good show is to always mix things up. Sometimes we wear makeup; other times we don't. The point is, you'll never get the same Avenged show twice. I think it's really important to be theatrical. I mean, look at Iron Maiden!

We're focused on making our fans happy, keeping each other happy, so we can do this forever.

We're not the kind of people to just take a break and say everything's going good, you know, let's rest on our laurels, act like rock stars - we take it very seriously, and we certainly aren't just celebrating and doing a victory lap.

This country is filled with remarkable people. One of my best friend's families is from Iran, and they're the most American family of all time. Some of the best people that I've ever met are immigrants.

To be honest, we never, ever let business weigh down the creativity of this band.

I wanna keep people on their toes, and that's just kind of how we've always operated.

We wanna be on the frontlines of everything new and exciting. The old world order of putting out four singles before you release an album is so boring to us.

I think we are really in touch with what's going on around us in the world of music, trying to push the bar forward and try new and exciting things that our fans can react to.

You carry on knowing that there's something so much more important than yourself to deliver to millions of fans across the world, to all your friends, and to yourself.

Iron Maiden and Metallica are bigger now than they ever were. They're playing stadiums across the entire planet. Even though it seems like their heyday was back when MTV and the radio played their songs all the time, the truth is that they've gotten bigger now because they play all the time, and people know they're going to get a great show.

I think, as long as people have a strong opinion, whether they love or hate us, I think we're doing something right.

Not everyone is going to love you. Not everyone is going to like what you do, and you see a lot of people don't want to let go of the bands that they love. They don't want to move forward. They don't want to let new things come in; they're scared of change. They're scared of new bands taking over their genre. They're just scared of change.

The first review our band ever got - when I was 17 years old and we had just released our first EP, and this tiny little magazine wrote a review on it, and for that month, we were the best album of the month, and we were also the worst album of the month. We won best and worst album of the month in the same magazine.

That's what bands like Pink Floyd and bands like Rush and even the Metallica of this world have, which is long, ambitious songs that pull in all different directions.

I'd like to think that we will have had something to do with a shift back to heavy rock. That's what we've wanted all along, and we knew there'd be fearless steps to take to achieve that.

For us to dial back a little bit and have a little more straightforward, singalong appeal was a challenge. In order to do that, we had to throw away a lot of stuff.

We wanted to write the kind of songs that can really cross any language barriers, any borders, and resonate with fans around the world.

Just by nature, we're always filled with so many ideas and want to cram as many ideas into a song as we can, and I think that gave us a lot of our signature sound.

We go out there every night, and we fight the battle. We don't care about people who don't think we're true metal. We hope to change their minds. I have total faith.

There's people that have never heard our album. The most they've seen is either our video on 'TRL' or our picture on the cover of magazines.

There's always going to be haters, but those people are few. We're not too worried about it.

We wanted to incorporate lights and the like to really accentuate the music. We play mostly small venues, so we don't use it overboard by any means. The most important thing is the music. I think we do a good job of letting that show.

We wanted to write songs that we really like that incorporate everything. It seems a lot of bands want to stick with one thing. We didn't want to be scared to do anything that we wanted to do. We didn't want anything to hold us back. We wanted no boundaries.

Basically, we're just a bunch of kids who got together and try to use what we have and try to learn from each other.

We didn't say, 'Hey, we're gonna pick a bunch of cover songs,' or, 'We're gonna write an original song that has to sound like this, because we're a metal band, so we're gonna cover some metal songs.' We did the opposite. We just said, 'We're gonna have fun with these songs, and we're gonna try different things.'

With 'Hail To The King' - our last album - we obviously wore our influences on our sleeve, and it was a blatant attempt to turn on our younger generation of fans to more classic-sounding metal.

Everyone loves to complain that there are no real bands on MTV, yet no one wants to step up to the plate and try to change that.

Only a world spinning out of control could inspire the music and vision we have now.

We have been harnessing every aspect of what makes Avenged truly unrelenting and building off of that.

When we were recording, sometimes I wondered if what we were doing would even be possible to play live.

We're trying to do something nobody else is doing right now.

When you see a band, you want to see characters.

I remember what it felt like when I was young, and I looked up to someone, and they would pay me just an ounce of attention. And some of the bands I listened to when I was young probably never even sold any albums, but it didn't matter to me. If I'd go up and say, 'Great show,' it would be amazing that they even would acknowledge me.

I think there's a whole group of kids out there that don't relate to the glitz and glamour of hanging out in clubs and partying all the time. So I think some people are just more real than that, and I think our fans are those kind of kids that need something to relate to, and I think we're the band to do it.

To be honest, we spent many years at Warner, and in the very beginning, there was a very passionate team that worked alongside us on a daily basis. Every year that went by, we would lose just about every single person that worked directly with us, to the point that I honestly couldn't have picked up a phone and gotten one person who knew me.

I think people have the right to love whoever they want, and I think that women have the right to do whatever they wish to their bodies given the circumstances.

That is one thing about playing with Guns N' Roses and Metallica: everyone wants to interview you.

I like being able to do dueling leads, and it's fun to be able to shred.

I've always loved big riffs and chunky guitars.

Even when we were at that point when we had very few fans, we never felt like a small band. We always felt like we had a big purpose.

'Waking the Fallen' truly encompasses everything that Avenged Sevenfold was at that time. It was us being fearless, us showing our roots in heavy metal, punk, rock n' roll, and not being afraid to try everything under the sun when it comes to writing music.

A great way to get your rhythm playing together is to work with a drummer, preferably someone that has a good groove and plays solidly in time.