OK, I just saw an Avenged Sevenfold video and I need to know if my theory is correct...

And they were on Warped this year.

And they're pushing 300,000+ sold, hello.

Bahahahaha

http://creative.myspace.com/groups/_jc/featuredmusic/avengedsevenfold.jpg

It's all very "well then."

I recall them being essentially a metal band, but their new video is like "We'll appease our old fans with the main bits, then through in a ridiculously sugary bubblegum chorus for the mainstream".

Honestly that chorus does NOT go with the main parts of the song ("Th eBeat and the Harlot"), not even close. They sound like two totally different songs, 1 mildly decint, the other horrifyingly awful.

You decide which is which.

- e

P.S. - Can any fans of their older stuff comment on their new embrace of mainstream radio ? Just curious as to how pissed you are.

There, I think that's spelt right

Police say James Owen Sullivan, a drummer and backup vocalist for the Southern California band Avenged Sevenfold, has been found dead at his home in Southern California.

Lt. John Domingo says the 28-year-old Sullivan, who went by the stage name The Rev, appears to have died of natural causes on Monday in Huntington Beach.

http://www.metalsucks.net/wp-content/uploads/2007/09/52704f.JPG

well, that settles that

Anybody else thinking that all these deaths are connected? Seriously...ALL in California, ALL "Natural Causes", ALL hot new talent, the list goes on. I think there should be something done about this. Someone has to be linked to all of this. Who is the King Pin? A drug company? Were they all depressed? Anemic? Is someone just jealous of their talent? Old star? New recruiter? Is it all tied to the government? That I believe is a "Yes." And it needs to be stopped. It all started with M.J. Or was it earlier than that? Could this all tie back to the era of The King, Kurt Cobain, Richie, etc? Whoever/Whatever, it needs to end NOW! Who knows who could be next...
TheMadHatter2010 6:51 AM

http://www.ncplus.net/~eli/images/avenge.me.jpg

What natural causes do you die of at age 28?

jadedness

they're doing an autopsy. I think all "natural causes" means here is "it doesn't look like an o.d."

I interviewed this guy a bunch of times and spent a few nights on tour with them in the UK for a couple of on the road pieces and he was - fwiw - the genuine article as opposed to a lot of guys in these really ambitious, Kerrang! style metal bands. (And I'm not really into authenticity all that much but was until 2008, a pretty much untrammelled drunk and drug user, so would seek out certain types when doing on the road pieces.)

It's really not my music at all and there was definitely a split (that I could sense at least) between this guy and the drummer (who were too right wing and jockish for my tastes) and the other guys in the band who I genuinely had a ball with.

Either way, this news has upset me a lot. And I can't really put my finger on it. No rocking dude with tattoos is an island I guess, no matter his propensity for empty headed republican bullshit or casual sexism. RIP.

I thought this guy was the drummer Doran...

Yeah, I was gonna say, sounds like you just trashed the guy who died!

Read that too quickly, thought at first you said the drummer was the only loser in the band.

Sorry, typed that in a rush yesterday. Just to clarify there seemed to be a split in the band between the singer and the drummer and the other three. I thought the drummer guy was a bit of a lunkhead but certainly ploughing his own furrow and certainly not exagerating his life style or trying to make himself appear any different to how he was. They were good fun as well. After shows in Wolverhampton, Glasgow and Edinbugh we all went out clubbing, where they'd be getting the beers in, arm wrestling with fans, dancing and riding on a mechnical bull in Wolves. All these junior metallers couldn't fucking believe it: "I'm riding round a nightclub in Wolves on a Wednesday night on the shoulders of the singer out of one of my favourite bands - who is fucking wasted. While his lead guitarist is dancing in a cage with my girlfriend."

If you compared them to Trivium or MCR, who would be in bed no less than an hour after the gig finished and would be up the next morning to go on a walking tour of the English city before watching the 11am showing of the new Harry Potter film or whatever, they were certainly a breath of fresh air.

I used to think that there was no 'right' way for a band to behave and I guess it's less likely that one of Trivium or MCR will end up dead any day soon but I can't deny the fact that when I was young (and up until quite recently) I liked to stay up all night drinking and doing drugs and listening to loud rock/dance/hip hop music and in that respect I always feel or felt a kinship with bands who do that whether they're QOTSA, Korpiklaani, Motorhead, Minus, Machinehead or Avenged Sevenfold. The music barely comes into this aspect of it.

But when I actually tot up the amount of people who have died that I've actually interviewed it's quite alarmingly high and depressingly, they seem to be members of metal bands usually. This coming so soon after Mike from Evile dying has kind of made me wish that all bands would be a bit more like Minor Threat or just take it a bit fucking easier.

I don't mean to trash The Rev, I just meant that despite some fairly marked differences I saw him as a kindred spirit of sorts and I'm sorry he's dead.

Wait, whoa, a band of dudes going out and getting trashed after a show is "a breath of fresh air"?

he provided ample context for that statement, don't be a dick.

For a board so dependent on snark, seems weird to call me out for what was obviously meant as a sarcastic toss-off post.

Oh dear

What natural causes do you die of at age 28?

okay, dude, are you being serious? (reminds me of my husband's cousin who walked up the stairs and just collapsed because of a heart defect.)

"Wait, whoa, a band of dudes going out and getting trashed after a show is "a breath of fresh air"?"

Yeah, that's the whole point of what I'm saying. It genuinely is not par for the course for a young ambitious touring metal band to be out and wasted every night now. The vast majority of bands - in my experience, which I'm guessing is enough to make a value judgement given the type of mags I write for - do not live up to this image. Why the fuck should they? The days of Hammer of the Gods are long since gone. There are too many bands competing for too little in the way of financial or critical reward for them all to be behaving like Avenged Sevenfold or Minus, to choose two 'lively' examples.

I really wasn't trying to be a dick, geez. It was just funny to read an experience that spoke against the received wisdom of the "crazy touring band lifestyle", that's all. It gave me a funny image of the MCR guys getting tucked in at 11 sharp by their manager, all of them wearing matching striped pajamas and brushing their teeth.

Absolutely no offence taken. Any hack/anyone using the phrase 'breath of fresh air' should be taken to task regardless of the context.

I was so gauche when I first met them in Manchester. I had this idea 'Punk band over from New Jersey. I know Manchester like the back of my hand, I'll take them out on the town. It'll be amazing.'

Then I got on to the tour bus about midnight after the gig (with Gerrard Way's exhortations about doing lines and getting wasted and punk rock still ringing in my ears) and *literally* one of them *was* wearing pyjamas and they were all arguing over which D&D DVD to watch. You know: the kid's animated series. I went out with their drummer (who didn't remain in the band long afterwards) and the two support bands and, did, literally meet them on the way to see a 9am showing of the new Harry Potter movie as we were crawling out of some post-Jilly's Rock World hell hole in China Town.

It wasn't a Damascene experience but I did kind of get then how big they were going to be and did admire them in a way I hadn't previously. I liked the fact that they were geeks who were into Pulp and Flock Of Seagulls as well as the non-violent 'message' of Black Flag and comics and tats and all the other stuff. Sooner that than some bunch of Dawn of the Dead style Babyshambles group.

Is that guy (not Doherty) from Babyshambles the illest looking dude to ever play an instrument? He looks like fucking Tollund Man.

Yeah it's no biggie, don't sweat it.

they were all arguing over which D&D DVD to watch. You know: the kid's animated series.

This makes me so happy, somehow.

That really is pretty funny, but now that I think about it does seem to make sense... I mean Gerard has always come across as very driven, so I guess I can see him trying to treat things very professionally. They did put on one hell of a show when I saw them on The Black Parade tour. Anyway, Avenged Sevenfold. I liked City of Evil well enough, at least as far as Hot Topic-approved metal goes, but that self-titled disc was one of the biggest pieces of shit I've ever heard.

Did Gerard Way not have a fairly publicised drink problem for a while in MCR? That rings a bell... uh I could look it up I guess. Don't know abt Trivium but the singer's voice was fucked for a while iirc so maybe that curtailed his partyin'

Yeah, he kicked the booze and coke pre-Black Parade it would seem

All the guys from Trivium drink but drink sensibly. Matt Heafy's dad is their tour manager.

Gerrard Way always seemed clean living to me but I met them about three times early doors and his habits could have been old habits resurfacing or ones acquired in the meantime, I guess.

Here's what I don't get, Doran: Why the hell would you want to go bar-crawling with a band anyway? I guess I'm the weird one; I basically quit drinking by age 19 because it messed with my writing and I'd known I wanted to write since I was like 12. But I fucking wish more metal bands would be able to sit down and have a serious conversation about their music instead of playing up the whole degenerate-biker-sex-god thing. (Towering exception is of course Lemmy, who's capable of having a serious conversation while slugging down a Big Gulp full of Jack Daniel's.) Oh, and totally agree w/jon re the surprising quality of City of Evil vs. the staggering horror of the s/t album.

I used to see the bar crawling vs. serious chat thing as enough of a false binary as to make it ignorable. I've got to go out and buy mouse traps now but it's something I'll come back to if you're interested. Because I am.

But in short: I'd been a music writer for less than 18 months when the MCR thing happened - I came to this part of my job relatively late in life compared to most. And I am - or was at least - as I've said a problem drinker, alcoholic, dipsomaniac, call it what you will. Pretty sad I guess but I relished the carte blanche to spend three days absolutely ragged and clattered - and still turned in some good colour pieces. (One of the best was with Lemmy and Young Heart Attack in Austin.) And to be fair, the pieces I'm talking about were On The Road style features. I'd never countenance getting really pissed with a band while I was doing an album feature or an anniversary feature or what have you. I did a lot of these features for Metal Hammer over a three year period. I didn't realise it then but I guess they were mildly a case of poisoned chalices; I had a good constitution and would usually be the last guy standing - if it was a boozy sort of do, which it mainly wasn't. The two or three occasions when I came unstuck, the results were spectacular but still remain something to tell the grandchildren I guess. (One involved me being thrown out of the actual interview by hotel security and Herman from Dragonforce having to finish the interview off in my absence, while I had a fight with a knife weilding mugger behind the hotel.)

But in short I've gone out drinking with enough people like Jaz Coleman, Ginger Elvis from Kyuss and the lads from The Bronx etc and come away with probably more interesting stuff than I would have got with them sober, for me not to regret the experiences that much.

http://i.imgur.com/pzK42UU.jpg

there's a whole cutscene at the end of that game that puts characters from the game (beloved mainstays of the codblops universe obv) and avenged sevenfold onstage together at last and they rock out, presumably to that song.

it's on youtube but ~_~_~spoilers~_~_~ for blops2 and avenged sevenfold too i guess

The Stage is a pretty good and fun album! horns!