- Posted by: Erin
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- Nov 16, 2011
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Avenged Sevenfold’s M. Shadows
As Celebrity Smack recently reported, after headlining the Rockstar Energy Drink Uproar festival the last few months, Avenged Sevenfold will soon head back out on the road for their “Buried Alive” tour, starting in Fort Meyers, Florida…November 23rd to be exact.
Loudwire recently was able to sit down with A7X’s frontman M. Shadows and chat with him about everything from their newest album Nightmare, to life on the road, future plans, and how the band has kept Jimmy “The Rev” Sullivan’s memory alive since his tragic passing in 2009.
Check out some snippets from the interview below:
Loudwire: So, is the plan now to finish out this tour, go home for the holidays and relax a bit and then get back into writing new material?
M. Shadows: We probably won’t write for awhile. We still have to go to Southeast Asia. I know we have to go to Bangkok, Singapore, Indonesia and we’re going back to Japan. We’re trying to go to China, so right now they’re working on a whole south East Asia tour with Japan, as well. So, that will probably be like four months after Christmas. We’ll probably take the four months off, do that tour, and then we’ll start talking about the next record after that.
Loudwire: Could you share one of those things that you’ve started doing on the bus that Jimmy [Avenged Sevenfold’s late drummer] used to do?
M. Shadows: Just small things, he would stay up until 7AM in the morning, drinking beers with our driver Merle, just sit there and tell stories all night. I noticed a lot of us are doing that now, staying up and hanging out and just watching the road and getting crazy up there. Jimmy would gather us all around and play his iPod and sing until 7 in the morning and go crazy, and I notice that we still do that. We get the iPod out and play some of Jimmy’s favorite songs — play some Mr. Bungle and Oingo Boingo — and get crazy. Just fun stuff like that that, that he use to always do, put your arm around your friend and drink some whiskey and have a good time.
Loudwire: ‘Nightmare’ has been called your most personal album and one that would take fans on a very dark journey. How would you describe the journey you took on the album?
M. Shadows: I was introduced to anxiety during this album; I had never had anything like that. I’m kind of a slave-driver during the process, I keep pushing the guys to write more and more and more, and I’ll throw out songs that people think are good. That’s kind of the process we had for writing the music when Jimmy was around. We got to the point where we were really happy with the music and I was going to start writing the lyrics, and then Jimmy passed away.
I had a lot of anxiety and all these crazy things that I’ve never experienced before, and just trying to figure out what the perfect words was to say. We were in the studio with [producer] Mike Elizondo and everybody — brilliant artists and brilliant producers — but it was just kind of a crazy. It was a confined space and I just felt like we were in this hole, trying to dig ourselves out. When it was all said and done, it was definitely something we were all really proud of.
I think on a musical level, I was happy with it, but not only that, I was happy with it on a sonic level, I think Mike did an amazing job and [producer] Andy Wallace did an amazing job, and when I got to sit back and listen to it all, I was just really proud of it. I was proud of all the work and struggle that we went through to get it done, I think it shows. It’s definitely my favorite record sonically and emotionally that we’ve ever done.
Loudwire: You mentioned the emotion involved; do you consider ‘Nightmare’ a tribute to Jimmy?
M. Shadows: Absolutely, there was nothing else going on in our minds at the time. Even the songs that aren’t about him are about him. The songs that are about him are obviously about him. The whole album is a tribute to him and his last piece of work and his first No. 1 record which he was never able to celebrate. It was so many cool things — he really respected Mike Elizondo, it was just a crazy time in his life and a special time in all of our lives and we’re lucky that we were able to get it to come together in the way that it did.
To read the full interview with M. Shadows, click HERE.
