Zacky Vengeance of Avenged Sevenfold shares how the band has evolved

Avenged Sevenfold guitarist Zacky Vengeance (actual name Zachary Baker) discussed the band’s creative development leading up to their most recent album, 2023’s “Life Is But A Dream…” in a recent interview with the Nik Nocturnal Podcast, as per Blabbermouth.

We always lean into heavy music, ’cause that’s just what we love; it’s in our DNA. But being huge fun fans of bands like [Mr.] Bungle —I mean, just anything, really, anything. I love Western music. Matt [singer M. Shadows; real name Matthew Sanders] loves Daft Punk. Brian [guitarist Synyster Gates, real name Brian Haner Jr.] loves different pop bands. We love everything, and everyone’s different. And so we just incorporate kind of everything, but our core DNA, from when we were 14 years old, it’s Metallica, Pantera, Bad Religion, Misfits, punk rock stuff, AFI, all the stuff we grew up really loving. That’s always gonna be there. So we always kind of go back to that. And then we push the limits, we expand, we incorporate all sorts of shit — basically, anything that’s gonna piss off fans and get their minds working in no matter what direction it is.

We still try and push the boundaries, and people are, like, ‘Fuck this. Fuck this band.’ And it’s been like that every single album ever. And the funniest part is we did not have a blueprint. We wanted to be a hardcore band. I wanted to be a punk band. Then we wanted to be a metal band. Then we wanted to do Guns N’ Roses rock shit. And then we wanted to be Mr. Bungle. We wanted to be influenced by Dream Theater. It was just like anything and everything. Whoever was driving the van [in the band’s early days] had control of the tape deck, and they would put the cassette tape in of what they wanted to listen to and torture us for the next 10 hours of a drive. And that’s literally what shaped our sound. It was everyone adding their influence of what they wanted AVENGED to be and what they thought it should be, and respecting everyone else’s opinions, and we put it all together. We didn’t know what we were doing. And we just took it and ran with it, and people would love it, they would hate it. And all of a sudden it became kind of accepted as its own genre, because people that liked The Used or liked My Chem[Ical Romance], it was okay to like us, or [people that] liked Thrice or AFI, it was okay to like us. And then the hardcore bands like Eighteen Visions and Bleeding Through, they were kind, like, taking us under their wing too, and, like, ‘Hey, it’s okay for us to like you guys. We don’t wanna beat you up anymore. This shit’s cool.’ And then, all of a sudden, it was just, like, off to the races. It was a weird thing. You went on Warped Tour, you played the best shows you could, the shows started getting bigger, you went from clubs to bigger clubs. And before you knew it, it was, like, MTV [picked up on it].

Upcoming shows with Good Charlotte:

• Jul. 25 – Ridgedale, MO – Thunder Ridge Nature Arena
• Jul. 27 – Shakopee, MN – Mystic Lake Amphitheater
• Jul. 30 – Tinley Park, IL – Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre
• Aug. 01 – St. Louis, MO – Hollywood Casino Amphitheater
• Aug. 04 – Clarkston, MI – Pine Knob Music Theatre
• Aug. 06 – Toronto, ON – RBC Amphitheatre
• Aug. 08 – Montreal, QC – Bell Centre
• Aug. 10 – Belmont Park, NY – UBS Arena
• Aug. 12 – Mansfield, MA – Xfinity Center
• Aug. 14 – Camden, NJ – Freedom Mortgage Pavilion
• Aug. 16 – Charlotte, NC – PNC Music Pavilion
• Aug. 18 – Tampa, FL – MIDFLORIDA Credit Union Amphitheatre
• Aug. 21 – Dallas, TX – Dos Equis Pavilion
• Aug. 23 – Denver, CO – Ball Arena
• Aug. 25 – Salt Lake City, UT – Utah First Credit Union Amphitheatre
• Aug. 27 – Phoenix, AZ – Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre