Avenged Sevenfold
Explore the band's historical lineups, musicians, and studio albums.
Active8 formations8 studio albums
Formation chronology
Newest first
Formation 8 of 8
Nov 4, 2015 – Present
Members
- M. ShadowsVocals
- Zacky VengeanceGuitar
- Synyster GatesGuitar
- Johnny ChristBass
- Brooks WackermanDrums
Formation facts
- Drummer Brooks Wackerman was already on Avenged Sevenfold's list of possible drummers in 2010 because his work with Infectious Grooves and Bad Religion had impressed them, but the band chose Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy first. Years later, they auditioned Wackerman in a quiet two-day rehearsal. He went home convinced he had failed, then learned they wanted him as a creative member who would help write, not just tour. The band kept his hiring secret for more than a year.
- Avenged Sevenfold kept The Stage secret, performed a live-streamed virtual-reality concert from the roof of the Capitol Records Tower, and released the album immediately afterward, as downloads and physical copies the same night. Vocalist M. Shadows had grown bored with the usual months-long promotional cycle of putting songs out in advance; he later said they could have run a conventional campaign and taken number one, and that the surprise was hard on casual fans, but they still wanted people to hear the full record before online commentary took over.
- The fifteen-minute closer “Exist” was written to evoke the Big Bang. The band originally wanted to use a recording of astronomer and science communicator Carl Sagan reading an excerpt from Pale Blue Dot, but his estate would not license it. They then approached astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, who asked them to choose ideas from essays he had used at the Hayden Planetarium and expanded those ideas into the spoken ending.
- As Avenged Sevenfold worked through the existential ideas behind Life Is But a Dream..., vocalist M. Shadows was reading French writer and philosopher Albert Camus and going through guided psychedelic sessions. Shadows stressed that the sessions did not hand them songs; the takeaway was simpler: time is short, so make the music bold.
- Lead guitarist Synyster Gates wrote the closing piano piece on Life Is But a Dream... for the birth of vocalist M. Shadows's first son, River. He first composed it on a computer using MIDI, years before recording the piano performance heard on the album. Originally titled Il sogno del fiume, translated by Metal Hammer as “River's Dream,” it later became the album's bare-piano finale. Gates, who is not classically trained, spent years learning to play it himself.
Studio albums
- Life Is But a Dream... (Jun 2023)
- The Stage (Oct 2016)
Formation 7 of 8
2013 – Jul 23, 2015
Members
- M. ShadowsVocals
- Zacky VengeanceGuitar
- Synyster GatesGuitar
- Johnny ChristBass
- Arin IlejayDrums
Formation facts
- Hail to the King was a deliberate attempt to write the “landmark riff” record Avenged Sevenfold felt they had never made, using Metallica's 1991 Black Album and Guns N' Roses as reference points. Vocalist M. Shadows later agreed that “This Means War” was obviously inspired by Metallica's “Sad but True”, but said the band was trying to capture the language of that era rather than simply copy another song.
- Drummer Arin Ilejay expected to play the highly technical, busy style associated with original drummer Jimmy “The Rev” Sullivan. The others handed him classic-rock records and told him to play like a caveman with two sticks: they wanted simpler, more spaced-out drum parts that served the songs, and he later said he was bummed at first.
- Avenged Sevenfold's public goodbye to drummer Arin Ilejay went out on July 23, 2015, thanking him for carrying them through a dark stretch and citing a different creative direction. Ilejay later said lead guitarist Synyster Gates had let him go by phone the year before, and that he had felt like a member of the band while being largely excluded from the songwriting and creative process.
Studio albums
- Hail to the King (Aug 2013)
Formation 6 of 8
2010
Members
- M. ShadowsVocals
- Zacky VengeanceGuitar
- Synyster GatesGuitar
- Johnny ChristBass
- Mike PortnoyDrums
Formation facts
- After drummer Jimmy “The Rev” Sullivan died, Avenged Sevenfold called Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy, whose playing had influenced The Rev for years. Portnoy has said he did not fly in to sound like himself: he followed unfinished drum sketches The Rev had recorded on an electronic kit so he could complete those parts rather than replace them.
- "Fiction" started as "Death", the last song drummer The Rev finished for Nightmare: a piano-and-drums demo with a rare first-take vocal using real words instead of mumbled melody. He told the others that was the last song for the record. The Rev died three days later, and they kept his voice on the track.
- When the Nightmare drum sessions were finished, Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy and guitarist Zacky Vengeance got matching Deathbat tattoos, using Avenged Sevenfold's skull-and-wings logo. For Portnoy, the tattoo reflected how personal the sessions had become and that he felt more like family than a hired studio drummer.
- In December 2010 the band thanked Mike Portnoy, the Dream Theater drummer who had recorded Nightmare and toured with them, and ended the year as they had planned. They were not ready for a permanent new member, and because this band had grown up on his playing, they believed the world would always hear “Avenged Sevenfold with Mike Portnoy” rather than Avenged Sevenfold.
Studio albums
- Nightmare (Jul 2010)
Formation 5 of 8
Sep 2002 – Dec 28, 2009
Members
- M. ShadowsVocals
- Zacky VengeanceGuitar
- Synyster GatesGuitar
- Johnny ChristBass
- The RevDrums
Formation facts
- Bassist Johnny Christ knew Avenged Sevenfold from the Huntington Beach neighborhood. He watched rehearsals in vocalist M. Shadows's mother's garage and jammed with drummer Jimmy “The Rev” Sullivan afterward. At a local gathering, Johnny learned the band might have to cancel the last two weeks of a tour because their bassist had to leave for “a wedding or something like that,” as he later remembered. Johnny offered to fill in, went on the road, and about a week and a half later the band asked him to join permanently.
- Producer Mudrock agreed to make Waking the Fallen on one condition: drummer The Rev had to play to a metronome click track. Mudrock told him to stop packing the songs with busy drum fills and learn to hold a steady groove. The Rev was furious, but the rest of the band thought that discipline was exactly what the record needed.
- The sung opening of “Unholy Confessions” started as vocalist M. Shadows goofing around instead of screaming; guitarist Zacky Vengeance and the others told him to keep it. Their label, Warner Bros. Records, later paid for a video to promote the song even though it had not originally been intended as a single. The video helped turn “Unholy Confessions” into the song most closely associated with Waking the Fallen.
- On the Waking the Fallen tour they drove themselves through the night, played shows, sold merch, and lived on about a dollar of food a day. They ate ramen when gas stations would give them hot water and sometimes split a single burrito three ways. Then major record companies started taking them to dinner, and they ordered escargot.
- On City of Evil, vocalist M. Shadows's move toward cleaner, raspy singing was a creative decision the band had already wanted on Waking the Fallen, not something forced by his vocal problems. He did need surgery after a blood vessel repeatedly ruptured when he screamed, then spent months working with vocal coach Ron Anderson to recover his range and develop the new singing style.
- “Bat Country” was inspired by Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the book by author Hunter S. Thompson, and the song was already written before Thompson died. Vocalist M. Shadows, a fan of the book, later said the timing “totally sucked.” The video eventually reached No. 1 on MTV's fan-voted Total Request Live countdown, an unlikely mainstream breakthrough for a heavy metal band.
- Drummer The Rev said he wrote four songs on Avenged Sevenfold's 2007 album Avenged Sevenfold, the record named after the band, largely from beginning to end, often working the ideas out at the piano. He told an interviewer that summer that film composer Danny Elfman was pretty much his musical hero.
- Drummer The Rev brought in “A Little Piece of Heaven” as an eight-minute piano-and-drums piece with a whole movie-like story already in his head. He and lead guitarist Synyster Gates considered saving it for a Halloween EP, a shorter release separate from the album, instead of finishing the full arrangement. Vocalist M. Shadows kept pushing to complete it, and Warner Bros. Records told the band the song belonged on the album.
- Avenged Sevenfold considered hiring producer Rob Cavallo for Avenged Sevenfold, their 2007 album, but ultimately decided to produce the record themselves. The band felt an outside producer might push the songs in directions they did not want, so they took control of the sessions and later sent the recordings to mixing engineer Andy Wallace.
Studio albums
- Avenged Sevenfold (Oct 2007)
- City of Evil (Jun 2005)
- Waking the Fallen (Aug 2003)
Formation 4 of 8
2002 – Aug 2002
Members
- M. ShadowsVocals
- Zacky VengeanceGuitar
- Synyster GatesGuitar
- Dameon AshBass
- The RevDrums
Formation facts
- When bassist Justin Sane was hospitalized following a suicide attempt, vocalist M. Shadows later said the crisis wrecked everything around the young band. Dameon Ash took over on bass afterward so Avenged Sevenfold could keep playing shows.
Formation 3 of 8
2001
Members
- M. ShadowsVocals
- Zacky VengeanceGuitar
- Synyster GatesGuitar
- Justin SaneBass
- The RevDrums
Formation facts
- Lead guitarist Synyster Gates had been making experimental music with drummer Jimmy “The Rev” Sullivan in Pinkly Smooth, a side project of theirs, and assumed Avenged Sevenfold was a hardcore punk band he wanted no part of. Hearing the finished debut, Sounding the Seventh Trumpet, Gates later said he heard heavier metal instead, not the hardcore sound he had expected, and told them of course he would join.
- Avenged Sevenfold was returning to the studio to record Warmness on the Soul, an EP, or short release, when vocalist M. Shadows ran into guitarist Zacky Vengeance at a concert by the punk band AFI. Shadows suggested asking Synyster Gates to join the band and add a guitar solo while they were in the studio. Gates accepted and joined Avenged Sevenfold as its lead guitarist.
- For his first Avenged Sevenfold show, lead guitarist Synyster Gates carried over a stage gimmick from Pinkly Smooth, the experimental project he shared with drummer The Rev. Inspired by the theatrical makeup of Limp Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland, Gates painted his whole face purple. The color looked wrong and would not come off cleanly; Gates later joked that he ended up looking like a green Oompa Loompa. He never tried the makeup again.
Formation 2 of 8
2000
Members
- M. ShadowsVocals
- Zacky VengeanceGuitar
- Justin SaneBass
- The RevDrums
Formation facts
- The record label Good Life Recordings put up about two thousand dollars and sent Avenged Sevenfold to Westbeach Recorders, a Hollywood studio, with producer Donnell Cameron, who had worked on records by the punk band Bad Religion. The band was excited to record in the same room where some of the punk records they loved had been made.
- Drummer Jimmy “The Rev” Sullivan decided to record the debut album's drum parts in a single pass, with no editing and no metronome click track to keep time. Vocalist M. Shadows later said they did not even know most drummers used a click track; everyone else just piled their guitar and bass parts onto whatever The Rev had played.
- Avenged Sevenfold's debut album, Sounding the Seventh Trumpet, sold about 300 copies in its first week. Vocalist M. Shadows remembered being thrilled anyway, because they finally had a CD that actually existed in stores.
Studio albums
- Sounding the Seventh Trumpet (Jul 2001)
Formation 1 of 8
1999
Members
- M. ShadowsVocals
- Zacky VengeanceGuitar
- Matt WendtBass
- The RevDrums
Formation facts
- Vocalist M. Shadows and guitarist Zacky Vengeance started writing the first Avenged Sevenfold songs in guitar class at Huntington Beach High School, then played them for grades. Shadows later said they barely sat down to write anywhere else, which is why those early songs jump from riff to riff.
- Drummer Jimmy “The Rev” Sullivan was already a much more advanced musician than the others. Vocalist M. Shadows has said The Rev laughed at how simple their punk-oriented songs were, seemed too good for the group, and agreed to join only because they were his friends: “I guess I will.”
- Avenged Sevenfold took its name from the Cain and Abel story in the Book of Genesis, the Bible's account of the first murder. Vocalist M. Shadows told an early interviewer it was a “what goes around, comes around” image, and that they were not a religious band.
- They wanted a logo nobody else had: a realistic skull with skeletal bat wings. High-school friend Micah Montague drew that mark, later called the Deathbat, and Avenged Sevenfold never swapped it out.