Avenged Sevenfold - The Road - on Talk Is Jericho - EP296

Talk Is Jericho, baby! Talk Is Jericho! Alright, welcome to Talk Is Jericho. It is the part of Thunder and Rock n' Roll. And how was that surprise last Friday? One Avenged Sevenfold dropped their brand new studio album The Stage and made the announcement right here on Talk Is Jericho. If you missed that podcast and you're an Avenged fan, the biggest heavy metal band in the world that's not Metallica, go give it a listen, M-shadows, and sinister gates spoke in depth about the

concept and the songs on the new record, the writing and the recording process. They also explained how and why they decided to do this surprise release. And I explained the whole story behind the Voltaic Ocean's controversy, the album title that I came up with when M-shadows and I decided to throw up a smoke screen to keep everybody off the track about the surprise release of The Stage. It was a great show, it was a huge show, but we're

continuing. Avenged Sevenfold, we continue today with Avenged Sevenfold The Road. Shads his back with bassist Johnny Christ to talk about touring and life on The Road. I guess some great stories about the recent stadium show at Metallica. Wooden's been like having new drummer Brooks Wacerman in the band. He was announced as being a part of Avenged Sevenfold right here on Talk Is Jericho. He's changed things for Avenged and all the drummers I know

are flipping out over his performance on the stage. You're going to hear all about that. You also get great story about the night they met Axel Rose, the favorite songs to play live, and how the guys in Avenged Sevenfold got their stage names. M-shadows, Johnny Christ, sinister gays, Jackie Vengeance, and Brooks Wacerman. Like I said, he's got to be called W. Accommod. They also got some secrets and tips to surviving life on The Road and Long

Tours. They were talking about their days touring in a van on the warp tour, playing in parking lots and dusty parking lots. It's the entire history of Avenged Sevenfold on The Road, lots of great stories and tips on how to survive. Talk Is Jericho. Okay, so we are here in an undisclosed Ritsy Hotel in New York City with a very hip. Very hip. Just by using the word hip, I think makes you not hip though. Totally. I got Johnny Christ and M-shadows here, Avenged

Sevenfold. Talking about the new EPIC, the new Opus, the new album from Avenged Sevenfold, which is entitled The Stage. I'll start. Leave a break there, just in case. But I mean, I just heard a couple tracks from it and it sounds amazing and it really is kind of like I said to you guys, I guess, my Avenged Sevenfold. It's carpeted, harkening back to the white album and the nightmare and the beast and the harlot style albums. What do you guys think in so far?

Man, who knows? We've been writing this record long enough to where we've completely lost all objectivity. Right. It's very true. It's been, it's been, it's been, it made us laugh when we wrote it. Yep. It made us laugh when we hear back to it. We were definitely laughing when we were in the mixes. Now, how do you mean it made you laugh when you wrote it? I mean, some of the parts you just sew off the wall are ridiculous that you're just like, well, that's really going

to be shocking. But when you listen to something for a year, then it's not shocking anymore. So, when you put it out, it's sort of like, well, you don't get this right away. Yeah. You know, like, but it's funny, though, like if you do a record or write a book or anything like that, when you see it and go over it so many times, like you said, is it like, if I'm writing a joke in a book or something, is it even funny anymore? Is this stupid? This is stupid. I'm an idiot.

You're even thinking this was funny. It was funny at one point. Right. So it's probably funny. It's still probably funny. I thought you hoped it was. Yeah. Which time somebody sees something that's going to laugh itself? We've laughed itself on previous records, too, when we put shit out there. It's just always, that's when I feel personally that we're doing something right is when I start laughing at it. I go, that's hilarious.

We were definitely laughing when we wrote City of Evil. Absolutely. And then when it came out, we were like, oh, this is dead serious. And then it came out and everyone's like, laughed at us. Which was cool. Just not all the little parts and stuff that are involved. Yeah, just so like, so over the top. Just like, how many guitars can you throw on there? Right. Right. And then once, eventually, 30 guitars feels normal.

Because you heard it all, yeah. Well, one of the songs we have is there's too many tracks even on it to mix it on one board. You have to do it a couple times. No kidding. That's right. Yeah. How many tracks are on it? Well, we don't know. We just know that they need to be sub-mixed before they can be. Because a mixing board would use normally has like 64 tracks, right? Or 32 tracks. Because it's just like, pro-tools won't open up the whole session.

Basically, you need to sub-mix a bunch of stuff and then put that into one track. This is going back to those old style like the Sergeant Pepper was recorded on a eight track and they had to dump it to like a 16 track and then dump it to a 32 track. Yeah, it's pretty much the same thing all over again, right? So, but I think one thing like on City of Evil that we are laughing about, obviously, is the Beast and the Harlot chorus. I mean, before that was out, it was like,

what do you think of it? It's such a heavy riff before and then all of a sudden you go into that that pop. Pure, pure, pure, pure, pure, super like we used to call like a beer-stein metal. And then these are a bunch of 20-year-old dudes from Southern California doing this. Yeah, maybe even funnier. And that's what we say this we've talked about before.

That's what really connected me with avenged right from the start on City of Evil was because of that element, the little bit of power metal, little Halloween, little guns and roses, the remones in there as well. But you use so many of these influences that bands of your ilk did not have and still don't have to this day, which makes me laugh because you're one of the biggest bands in the planet and no one's trying to copy you. Yeah, I think I'm probably uncopable.

No one wants to venture. We can't even write two records in a row that sound like us. So, but isn't that the idea though, right? Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, we just write what makes us laugh and what we have fun with. And I think that's just, we don't know how else to do it honestly. Like we've actually written things that sound too much like us and we're like extremely bored with that and we throw it away. And it's like, I understand that people would like this, but we can't live

with ourselves. So we just, I mean, how many times is that still happening? It goes all over every time. Every time someone regardless who it is brings in a riff that sounds like something we'd done before immediately. Or just something that sounds like us. Exactly. Well, yeah, sounds like us. Yeah, because it's not like, oh, it's not like, oh, that sounds like a nightmare riff. It sounds like that could be it could have been in the album. Yeah. And that was so long ago now.

That's always the hallmark of great bands is that they're always updating, changing, and evolving. You can go back to the Beatles once again, or Zeppelin, or Guns and Roses, or you too, or even Metallica. It's almost like to get the longevity of having a 20, 30, 40 year career has to change unless you're ACDC or Slayer, but those are the two anomalies, right? Yeah, I think we just have a good time challenging our audience and challenging ourselves. So we don't house to do it. But then again,

we don't take this that seriously. It's a really try to think of it as like a science of like, what are our fans really going to like or this or that? Did you find like with with Hale to the King, which was specific, let me remember we talked about it around this time two, three years ago, whatever it was when you were putting that together, it was a specific like we want to make this a very strip back groove heavy type of album. Yeah, I mean on that record, honestly,

I mean you walk into a bar and you can't play an events, simple stuff. It's too complex or it's too this or that. And we just want a record that you could play with a one two groove stop and it sounded like a throwback to what we grew up on. And that I still love the fact that if you walk into a bar, you're going to play the Beast in the Harlot, you're going to play Hale to the King. Which one's into sound better? Which one's going to make people want a drinking groove? And to me,

we wanted that for our career to have something like that. So that element of it is cool to me. But in the process, you lose a lot of raw power and off the railsness because it's very controlled. And so I think on this record, we wanted to just have it to where it felt like it could run off the rails at any moment. And just a little bit more out of control. How did you feel about Johnny, about Hale, the King being kind of a little bit of a stylistic change?

Well, I think it was what we wanted to do at the time. I mean basically, like Matt just said, we wanted to strip everything back. We wanted to have this slower, bigger sounding record. We always went back to a lot of albums that we grew up listening to and we were wondering, why does this sound so much better? Like, it's just so much bigger and everything at that. And then we wrote to make sure that that happened even before we went into the recording process.

And that's just what we wanted to do at the time. I'm super proud of it. I wouldn't change a single thing about it. But I'm also really happy about what we're doing. Yeah, that was a huge success for you. And now it gives you creative license to go back to this style of a record, which you said, which is tempo changes and crazy playing and laughter all around. It's actually funny though. Hale, the King was one of the WrestleMania themes this year.

I know, that was awesome. They still come a little late, but it's cool. I know. I was like, why did they choose that? I was, it was weird. But yeah, I think when we got into the process after Nightmare, it really like boiled under our skin to think about, you know, doing another record like that. And like everything we were writing sounded really like it was the next evolutionary process. But it wasn't exciting us. So that's why we made such a big turn.

But I think giving us that, you know, six years from Nightmare to now, it kind of allowed us to say, well, we want to bring some of that back. But let's continue to move forward and make it even different. Like I think there's an alternative field of this record. I think there's a bunch of things that, you know, we went really out on the vocals. The vocals are very like melodically. They're completely different than anything we've tried before.

And that's every song. We're not trying to write the third, the root note or the fifth. I mean, it's like the weird blue notes and the weird stuff. A lot of jazz notes on that, a lot of jazz chords that we played even on the guitars and stuff too. Yeah, so it got very, very, that was able to keep us excited about doing this. But you bring back the dueling guitars, but you use different notes and scales than you're used to. And that kept us, so you get the energy of all that stuff.

But now you're getting a different tone altogether that you can't really place your finger on. Except that I just wasn't. You just explain what it is. We just put all your fingers on it. Now you got it. We'll be going back on it. Do you think anything just popped my head to the fact that Nightmare was done without rev after he passed away, but still a lot of his songwriting.

Held of the King was a very departure, almost to maybe, I don't know, cleanse the palette, so to speak, maybe a little bit of having your first record writing without him and his involvement. Yeah, one thing was like ego too. We're not going to give the fans exactly what they want. Like because like, oh, let's go prove we can write the same type of songs to rev. Which to some people, that would be the most logical step.

To us, it was like, no, we're just going to continue to do something completely off the wall, whether he's here or not. And we just, we're going to deal with the consequences, whatever it is. And so I think that's how you, that's how we've always operated. But we're stubborn. Now we like to do what we really, you know, intrigues us instead of what might be the safe route or like the, oh, let us give you a record just so you understand that we can still chant it out. Sure, right.

Like, that just irked us as well. Does the idea of that? So you're, so whatever was going to inspire us, which was, let's make a very stripped down big record. That's what we were going to do no matter what. And we understood full. We understood full. We would have been a hundred percent on board with that too. I think so. I mean, we know I'm better than anyone. Yeah, yeah. And I think at that point, it was like, that's just where we were going to go. That was a natural step.

You said no matter what. Yeah. And nothing to do with that. And to be honest, the process would have been a lot easier if Jimmy was around. Yeah. It still ended up being great. And at the end of the day, like, I just, I know in my heart that that record would have been made the same way. Yeah. There probably would have been a couple of other flavors in there. Yeah, there definitely would have been. But overall, he would have been a hundred percent on board on this. Like, this isn't.

Yeah, well, you're dealing with a new age of like everybody talking everyone doing their things. And you always get like the people that are like, oh, clifton, dime, italic, would still be writing thrash records. And it's like, that's not true. He's got a rolling rise. That's still in that truth. I know.

Yeah. The fans who say that it drives me nuts because if you know anything about Metallica, is that Clif introduced Melody to James via REM and the almond brothers and Leonard's skin and all that sort of stuff. That started with Clif Burton leading into what James does now. Totally. Right? The people like to kind of grab her. Sure, sure, sure.

You know, it's like if Jimmy would have passed away during City of Evil, then the excuse for the White Album being slowed down would have been Jimmy passed away. You know, like, this is always these. And so that's the view set to kind of keep out of your mind. And that's why we really, when we decided to hell with the King, we didn't want any of that to influence. Like I said, oh, go do a safe record. And just, you know, have everyone shred on it.

And even though your heart's not in songs like that. Sure. So we just continue to do our thing. And I think this has been fun, but there are enough differences and nuances to where it kept us excited. Yeah. And you can start hearing some of those, you know, those old, like I said, that old style, not old, it's been five years or whatever. But that avenged sevenfold classic weird little guitar parts.

And there's a lot of dynamics in the songs that I've heard so far that really take it back to that. Yeah. But also moving it forward to where we are now. Totally. You know? I agree. What about when, because another thing I was going to laugh about Hell's The King is that people compartmentalizing every song. This is a mega-dass song. And this one is a Guns and Roses song. This is a Metallica song. I never heard, I mean, maybe in this means war, it's a little Metallica-esque.

But like we discussed, Louis, Louis, and Wild Thing are the exact same riff. Right? There's no different. There's no difference. The Wicker Man by Maiden, running wild by Priest, and makes you want to sing by Striper, same riff. The bottom line you play metal, and there's only 12 peanuts, right? Well, I will say this. They definitely will not hear one thing on this new record that sounds like anything. You're like, okay. You're good or bad. What did you think about that? That's not even musical.

What are they doing? What did you think about when you heard that when people were complaining about that sort of stuff? You know, obviously you have to half-roll your eyes at just the hyperbole that goes along with anyone that says anything on the internet. It just gets all this steam because everyone loves to jump on stuff. You know, you see it in sports commentary. For us, like for me, I'm a huge sports fan, so I follow a lot of sports athletes in terms of like on ESPN and stuff.

And you read the comments below, and it's everybody believes the same things. LeBron's a crybaby, this is Kevin Durant, this is everything, everyone hates everything. But it's like the same opinions that are, they just kind of like just snowball into this huge effect where everyone says the same thing every time. There's no like buddy thinking out there that you have to kind of just go, okay, well I can correlate music to the sports world for me because that's what I kind of follow.

And to me, you just, I just don't think Kobe cares. I don't think in these guys care. And I just don't care enough to really worry about that. Yeah, because you just go out and play the songs and they go for really well live and you do things. And we could not have been more forthright in all of our interviews leading up to what we were releasing. You know what I mean? Like there's interviews that go back six months before that record. And we said we wanted an old school record.

These are going to sound like our favorite bands. These are going to just really take you back to this and that. And it comes out and they're like, oh my god, what the f***. So it's like, how much can you warn somebody? Right. So that's why I think on this record we've been a lot more silent. We're going to let people figure it out for themselves.

But I also think it's going to challenge people in a way that they're going to be like, they either don't get it or they're going to get it, which is going to be fun. But won't they get it if they're a vengeful fence? Unless you have a whole bunch of new fans that came on for Hill to the King. I think our fans have been with us for our hardcore fans. I've been with us for so long at this point that I don't think we could throw them a curveball that they could knock out of.

Yeah. So that's one thing that I'm very thankful for, like the fans have been awesome all the way through. When we just put it out, they go, okay, cool. I'm going to come at it with an open mind. Yeah. It's been fantastic in that realm. Yeah. I think note wise in this record is going to throw some curveballs people. It's the difference between all those core nail vocal melodies or those patent vocal melodies which are out.

That's very much plays a part in this record where the vocal melodies are out purposely, which means by out. Out of the normal realm or out of tune? No, no. It's hard to explain, but it's out there. No, no. If you listen to a Pink Floyd vocal melody or a Chris Cornell melody, if you actually break that down, they're doing a lot of rubbing on notes. They're doing a lot of things that might not be true per tradition.

We did that a ton on this record, where we're constantly rubbing notes and doing things to kind of catch your ear. That's something that has really appealed to us in terms of some great vocals that do that kind of stuff and write those kind of songs. But you have to do it tastefully in a certain way. There's a big difference between doing a pop melody and doing something that a Chris Cornell would do or even an axle at times.

They're just kind of slither in and out of the notes and they kind of, is it really writers or wrong? You don't really know. It's a good example of all those vocal melodies are what you would call out. They're beautiful. But they're gliding in and out of notes. Yeah, exactly. We talked about that earlier about some of those early Iron Maiden records. There's a lot of gliding in and out of the note. It may not be technically perfect, but it sounds cool. It sounds cool.

That's all that we're going for in this record, too. The personality had to come through on everything, like vocals, guitars, drums, everything. We're like, wow, we have Brooks Wackerman playing the drums right now. Let him go off. And he does. Yeah. And he's a monster. Brooks was really, you know, he didn't want to have any drum editing done. It's just he comes from that old school. He didn't want to have any samples on his drums, which is awesome.

And most people listening to this will be like, well, what are samples? Or I heard people do that. Well, 99% of the band you listen to are playing, have samples all over their drums. And what Matt's saying is that they'll take the snare drum and then put a sample of another snare sound, which is usually the black album Lars Ulrich snare sound. A little tweak it. A little tweak it. And actually a program that's actually for that. The Lars snare sound. I mean, Bob Brown is a black album.

It's a black album. The black album. Every drums are going to sound the same no matter who's playing it. Yeah. But that's not human because a drummer doesn't hit the snare of the same hardness, the same sound every time. Well, in the double kick, you know, it comes off like, you know, we have a ton of respect for bands in our genre. But the bottom line is a lot of those bands. It's so mechanical and fake sounding and quantized. And it just wears on you eventually. And you don't know what it is.

It's just like, yeah, this all sounds too perfect. And then you go see the band live and they sound better live because there's not all that mechanical stuff going on. And the records now, it's scary for people to put out a record without all that stuff on it. Like, I have so much respect for like the last faith in the more record or like the system of down records or the tool records. Those records are organic. You can tell there's nothing on them. And those are the band playing.

And that's something we wanted to really get back to on this record because, you know, on Hell of the King, we obviously use samples, you know. And just to make the drums beefier and bigger. And so you just want to, you know, we're the band that does one thing that we want to do the exact opposite the next time. So this one feels good. Wake up the next morning and change it. Change it again. So I was a few, Johnny, I never got a chance to ask you this.

Obviously being the bass player and having the rhythm section. And you played with the rev and then he passed away and you played with Mike Portner and then you played with Aaron. Now you play with Brooks. Was it hard for you to switch from drummer to drummer? To be honest, no, it wasn't difficult. It was more, I think Jimmy actually playing with him for so many years actually kind of molded me into a better musician. Just playing off of him the whole time, like I learned his groove.

And then I just kind of took that with everybody else after that. And it ended up being good, you know, and it'd been great. Like Mike was awesome to play with because, you know, it was for Mike Portner. And Aaron came in and he was great. He definitely had his groove. But it locked in pretty well with me. And then with Brooks now, it's just, it's a little bit more back to Jimmy, to be honest.

When I look back there, I see him going crazy with a stone face the whole time and I'm going, that reminds me of Jimmy. And it's rad. He's got more of a feel naturally because Jimmy had been a fan of Brooks from infectious grooves and stuff. He has that groove, that funk element that can bring into metal. And I think that's really a huge thing in his new style or the new record and everything with him.

Like he's just coming in and he's doing a lot of the stuff that I know Jimmy would have done too. But he's doing it his own way, you know, it's really cool. It's interesting to think that, you mentioned infectious grooves and roll fans and infectious here, that their drummer is now in avenged. And their bass player is now in Metallica. It's crazy. Like what a frickin rhythm section they had. I know. That's what everyone loved about him. Yeah, crazy.

I mean, we were talking about, I was talking about this other day with Brooks and the reason he didn't want to have any edits to his drums is, if you listen to those old, and he was talking about the Standy Wallace, listen to those old slayer records. When Dave Lombardo is playing fast, it's got like a bounce to it that no one else has. It had like this groove, like he was the only one that can make that band groove like that. I love Paul Boe staff as well. I love those records.

But like there's just something about the non-perfect feel of a human being and just being a slaying drummer. And I think Brooks brings that to our band. If you touch that stuff, it takes it all out. And you know, like it's like opening a can of worms. You fix a couple things here and there. All that groove goes away because now you're on a grid. You might as well be playing proper dance music. Oh, just use a drum machine. Yeah, you might as well. It's getting to that point.

You're playing it in any ways. You're brief doing all the tombs, you're doing everything anyways. So to me, I think he was, I love his attitude towards it. It's just like this is how a human plays it. And this is what, this is how you keep personality in a band. So that's been fun. Yeah. It was the first time I think I ever heard a blast beat with a groove. Totally. He does this little shoulder thing. He literally is doing a blast beat. His shoulder is moving like he's like grooving.

Dude, that shoulder never stops. It doesn't matter what you do. We're watching him in the in the main room and watching him in the live room and just going, what the fuck up with that shoulder? Yeah. And he's like, like he said, he's just like stone cold, starrer straight ahead. Like not even making a sweat, making blast beats that, you know, sound like he's from Norway. Yeah. You know, it's funny is he's like such a cool laid back, you know, total so-called guy.

The only time I ever saw him flustered is when you and him came to a raw in Anaheim. They came to the Dota V show and Brooks had his twins with them who were going nuts. They were running ones over here, ones over there, one has to go to the bathroom, ones over there. Dude, he left about 10 minutes and he couldn't take it anymore. So I can't even drive me crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Kids will do that to you. Yeah. You know, that's right. Absolutely they will.

That's one thing I was thinking about the slayer thing too about Dave and Bartley before we move on. Is that I loved slayer even when they had like you mentioned blast beat but they would always go to like that half time with the ride symbol. Yeah. And nobody plays like that. And so much of a vibe to it and that's what Brooks is doing as well. That's got a balance man. Yeah. Yeah. Was it- Yeah, fun doing this considering that his last probably five six albums were with Adreligeant.

He had a blast I think. We flustered him one day. We got him in a situation where, you know, everyone's in the control and going, you know, I love this now do that and you could tell you just like you guys like I only have two hands. Two legs. And he was even he said that because he would still do it. It was just it wasn't it was good for his standard. Yeah. Yeah. Everything written out and then throw something on him that we felt could be even more insane sounding.

So he he said he's going home that day. I can go home and practice this. So he did and he came back and he nailed it but it was it was interesting to see and I we said listen to you. We're all going to have those days. Yeah. And we did. Yeah, all of us. We all say it's rum in the vocal booth like you guys. Yeah, try this. Yeah, it's making sounds stupid. This is like you guys. I think you did you played on the Halloween record. I think it's rabbit. Don't come easy.

I guess Vykeath had a yeah, please have a beer. You're a rock star man. You can drink my whole Johnny Christ is now entering my my he pulled out the dom perignon. Oh, I'll just tell the beer. But how are you pronouncing it? I think so. So, uh, but Mickey he had composed Michael Vykeath had composed all the drums on a drum machine and then gave them to Mickey to learn. And Mickey was like, I only have four limbs, Matt. It's like a f**k octopus needs to play this. Oh, that's the thing.

Like try this. Try this. Just stop. I can't do it. Yeah, stop being able to possibly some time to figure this out. Yeah, we did the same that we've done it multiple times where we write orchestration parts. And like they're way outside of the scales of where people can actually play them or like we don't leave enough breath for the brass players. Like we need this to go for a good minute and a half without you know any and they're like, what are you talking about?

They actually call us out on the right. They're like, did you write this part on a keyboard when you were demimiting it out? Like, oh, yeah. Oh, we can tell. Yeah. Or they're like, okay guys, we have MIDI examples. It doesn't work. It doesn't work that way at all. Do you guys, I mean, the one thing I always say about events that always impress me from that time you guys all came over to my house on your off day, all five guys. You guys are a real tight knit group. The four of you now.

Is it hard to have a new guy come in and conversely Brooks is not here, but is it hard for Brooks to kind of break into the gang of four? To be honest, no, it's actually been surprisingly pretty seamless. I mean, he's, Brooks has a great personality on top of it. And like you even touched upon, he has that Southern California mentality, which obviously fits in well. And, you know, he comes in and he's funny. He has a dark, witty humor. He has one drink when we're out of the bars.

He's still hanging out. And I was like, preferably a big drink. It's an umbrella. Exactly. He actually, funny story. The other night, he actually made me order him a drink because I was closer to the bar. And I was offended to have to order it for him. It was a, it was a Malibu and pineapple juice and shit. We're New York City not on a Lulu dude. Yeah, every time. But he's been, he's been absolutely great. He totally fits in with this group.

He's 100% in, and like I said, his whiteness fits in so well. Like, because he'll just, he'll put in a little quip that'll, that'll, that'll, uh, very dry out. That'll call you out. And you're like, he's very, that's awesome. So he's a seasoned vet too, which is the same as you guys. So he has that experience as well. You don't feel like you're getting into anything with him. It's just like, this is going to run really smooth. I think we run our ship exactly how he wants to be in a band.

It's not, there's no high pressure of things. We just give him the tour dates. We're doing it, figuring it out, family can come if they want, whatever you want. And I think he really appreciates that. And it's a less grueling schedule than he's used to. It's kind of more relaxed. You know, we told him, you know, we don't do huge long tours in Europe. He was really relieved with that because you're away from your family for so long.

And it's like, yeah, it's really, it's not anything against Europe. It's just, man, you don't want to be there for five, six weeks. Why don't we do two weeks go home for a week, come back, go home for, then everyone, it's like a lot more relaxed. And I think he is really excited about that whole prospect of it. We've been sevenfold stage came out on Friday. Big surprise release. And I'm sitting here with bass player Johnny Christ and my boy, M. Shadows.

There are lots of parallels between avenged and Metallica. Have you learned from them or if you picked up some tips from them? I think they've had such a strong prominent career that they're obviously doing a bunch of things right. I think they have a lot of personality classes as well, I'm sure. You know, just go out and dinner with them, you can tell. They're all just different people. And I think as we get older, we're all different people. And we need to be respectful of each other.

And with people, you know, people have kids, some don't. Some want to have kids. And so you have to get on a schedule where it works for everybody. And you watch them and yeah, they don't, that's a band that can afford to fly themselves on vacation every week. But they still choose to do the two weeks or a week on and they get out of there. And they kind of recharge the batteries and get back at it. And I think one of our biggest problems when we were first starting, we had no option.

It was when you were up for six, seven weeks at a time. And we had to cancel a whole UK tour because we were like, okay, we got eight weeks here. Then four weeks at, you know, in America, then four weeks in South America, and we have another six weeks in Europe, we're like, cancel Europe. And then, because you can't handle that. Right. It's just a human being. Yeah, you just can't handle. And it's like the twang life at that time too, is. Yeah, it was much harder.

Because it's a journey hasn't changed much. I'm still in that van where I was sitting across from Matt, like literally with the table just like this. And where it's just, and I'm going backwards. Yeah, you're going backwards. Let's talk about that some of those old days. When was that, was that like a warp tour? Was that like a no? That was when I was in the profits. I was in Europe. In UK. It was our first time in actually anywhere outside of the world. It was like 24 dates in the UK alone.

Yeah. You imagine that. I mean, it was crazy. Like you're going every little yovl and little squirrels. By the way, our driver was also our tech. And he was pissed. Anyways, the man. He was a great dude. But it was like, how can anyone handle that? You're driving the band. Then you have to get out and tune every two towers and do all of this stuff. And then it's like crazy. I asked him one day if he would change the strings on my bass. He said, well, no, I think you should do that yourself.

Okay, cool. Best tech ever. I was that you first few tours. Was that your first time? I imagine both of you guys had ever been overseas. It was. Yeah. It was the first time where you. It was crazy. And to be honest, lots of profits were really big at the time. They were drawing, you know, doing all of those like 2500 sell out the, you know, the universities on the do their academies and those. It was great. I mean, it was a great tour for us. Who else was the Bronx on that with us?

The Bronx were on it, yes. Or no, if you know for a friend, they give us Bronx. Okay. So there was a. It was one of those tours anyways. And you got to do Brixton for the first time, which was like 5000 cap. It was awesome. And I remember the promoter coming up and he was going, you guys will do this someday. And I was like, no way, man. I was like, yeah, I think so. You got to throw out the confidence very. Yeah. Definitely. We got this. So no, those, I mean, those sort of tours were awesome.

We had so many things where you walk into like Rock and Park and your sound guy quit the night before. And you're asking shadows, falls guy to do it. And he comes over and never even heard the music. Yes. And you're just like, now I would not, I could not even imagine rolling into like a. 60,000 packed middle of the day show where you, the sound guys never heard a song. And you're like, if people only knew what we go through sometimes to get the show, to put the show on.

Yeah. We had Valkin one time where our sound guy apparently didn't know he was supposed to be there. Our tour manager was stuck over in another country. Our bass player was not there and we lost all our guitars. So Scottie and gave us his guitar. Anthra, Xlenta, this our sound guy. We had our tech play bass and still was a good gig, but it's like Valkin. Our first time at Valkin, the biggest frickin festival. That's amazing. What do you do, right? That's, that's crazy. I know.

And people have no, you're up there. They have no clue all the shit that doesn't want to know. No idea. All you guys have to do is just rock. Yeah, it's really experienced actually when we were open up for a G&R and was it Paris, right? Paris or Czech Republic? Was it Prague? I think it might have been Prague. All of our stuff didn't make it to the, to the show. Like it was on a truck like way behind us.

Like, well, we got to go on and Sebastian, Valkin actually allowed us to go on after them at the point when we were put on. Oh. So he was, he was vanseminful, Sebastian Bok and Guns and Roses. Yes. Wow. And we were able to go. Oh wait, didn't we play, it was them first though. They played first. Yeah, okay. But that wasn't the normal lineup, I don't think. They played first because we were still. No, no, it wasn't normal lineup. Was that the last one? Yeah, I was around the city of Yulkamaat.

We were, big boys. We got to, yeah. We were swinging up every time. And by the way, by the way, he was great. He was so nice to us. He was a great guy. Yeah, he was good. But the, I remember that was when, like, Axel hadn't even left London yet. No. We were already off stage. And you were in Prague. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And he showed up really late. I mean, that was just a different era. Yeah. Was that, was that era of G&R? And it was our first show playing it with them.

And it was, it was awesome now. I mean, it was so cool to be on. It was so cool. It was so cool playing a show with them. You know, you just don't know how long those guys are going to last. Right. Like the big rock bands. And if you get to do a couple tours or shows, I mean, we've obviously been lucky enough to have 12 more years of getting to see Guns of Roses and now they're reunion. It's great. But you just never know at that time. Sure. You just like, we have to play with Axel.

It's like, who we grew up with. And you're obviously influenced by Axel. Not really. Especially that era of G&R. No, no, no. You can hear that at all. You can hear it or see it. Backwards hat, du-rag shades, you know. Did you have ever any interactions with Axel? Did you ever see him around or? You know, Sebastian, one night, took us to his backstage after the show, like his room. And he was the most chill, great dude ever. It was awesome. He just chill and talking.

All the stuff you heard about it was just like, didn't you make it? Well, Jimmy had a good night with Axel. Jimmy had a good night with him. And Sebastian, he went out to some clubs. Was that also, and probably, I think it was after the first show. I wasn't broke, yep. Yeah. And he came back with the story, man. Lots of stories. Fantastic. What a trio that is. I also met him at a corn CD release party. I was with Benjy and Joel.

And Axel actually came up to me and said, hey, I wanted to thank you for the nice things you said about me in the press. I took a picture with him and it was awesome. That's cool. It was like, he just came out of hiding. Because he had the braids, he had the hockey jersey and the braids. And he was that era and like, no one had seen him for years. And he just showed up to this thing. And he was super cool.

Yeah, Axel's always been really nice to us, even the little bit that I got to hang out with him. He was always very cool. So he has got to open for the biggest of the big. He was ironed, maiden is in there and Metallica opened for them. And I mean, all those bands that grew up listening to him. I know kidding, huh? It was unbelievable. My first show ever was a Metallica show. Obviously, grew up loving Steve Harris. You know, and meeting him. You can hear them. And you can meet him? Yeah, yeah.

He's a sweetest dude. Yeah, all those bands treated us really, really well. So that's always, that's like the biggest thing we've learned from them. If not anything musically, it's all about how you not only maintain a career, but how you treat the opening bands, you know, just try to be as accommodating as possible. Because they are coming in in a van that, you know, that they've been driving around. And it's not as luxurious of what you came in, you know. It's harder.

And we came from that too. So we understand. Well, it's what I mean. Right. We did it forever. We know what happens when you do all night in your warp tours or all your advance for you guys, right? On the warp tours where they're crazy. Until it closes and then you pack up your shit and then you drive, you know, sometimes eight to 12 hours. And then you roll in as the show's starting again. Because you just. And you might be the first band on. Yeah. In the parking lot.

If they see rolling in late, you will be the first band on. I haven't lying in special. Oh, you party with me last night. Okay. Yeah. Oh, man. That was hilarious. It was like an ongoing joke on that tour. I think you party with Kevin Levin. You are going on first next. Yes, I was. Well, it was the worst when we actually went out on that houseboat with him. And then the next day we had to, I was like, yeah. You were on a houseboat on the day off with me. And you put me on for 10, 30.

Get out of here, dude. We did that to us on our hometown. We all slept in and we got a call. And we guys were on a 30 minutes. We're like, we can't make it. And then he let us play later. But it was like, put us on a 10, 30 realtor 11 o'clock. Yeah. I always love hanging out with Kevin now. He's right. Especially if he didn't put you on first the next day. Oh, I very much appreciated that. Yeah. We used to go to Orlando and do a bunch of TVs there on it.

I was in WCW and it was a downtown Disney. It was really hot. And they had this place called Eight Tracks, which was like a disco club. So everyone would just go there. And this is when XDC first came out. So everyone would take XDC and drink and just hang out. Listen to disco and dance and dance. And the one night I saw the booker Kevin Sullivan. He's like the boss. And he was in the corner watching me. And I was like, what the hell is he looking at me for? I came the next day.

I had four matches the next day. One at 11, one at one, one at three. No, one at nine, one at 11, one at one, one at one at three. Wasn't he the guy that fronted the NWL and everything like that? No, that was Eric Bischoff with the boss. Yeah, but Kevin Sullivan was the booker. He's the guy who puts the matches together and he got to get to that. Yeah, yeah. So he was like, God, he got to be partyin', he ain't partyin'. He put me on fire times. Nine o'clock in the morning. Still drunk and high.

So. So. So good. Yeah, the rest of the life is like rock and roll. You're going for a little grab and you tell the other guy, I've been out play. Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. Dude, I got terrible hangover, man. If he's a friend, he takes these. If it's someone you don't know, they just give you a big chill attack or a big clothes line or something. He's like, dude, I told you my head's gonna fall. You know, that's the worst feeling.

I'm sure you guys have been to that before playing shows, it's hungover and out of it. Well, he usually doesn't close the line, but I get to do it. I'm quite a slam-zolling. It's easier though if you're actually a musician. If you're a guitar player, bass player, singer, you can't do that. I don't think I've ever really walked on stage hungover because I won't drink that I before shows. Yeah. It's just because it is too brutal.

From the early days, I've had a couple shows where I remember looking to Jimmy and I'm like, mouthed to him, get me out of here. He's like me too. Like we're both dying. You know, it's like warp-tour days for sure because I remember one in Cleveland replayed. I was like, I'm not even homin' to do this. In the earlier days, he used to party a little bit before, but like, he just... No, if you have a little bit of power set, there's no way. You can't.

And by the way, if you blow it out one night, it's done. It ain't coming back for the next show. Yeah, vocally, that's right. And a day off doesn't do anything either. Not enough. You know? And it's a horrible feeling when you start to feel like, especially if you start getting a little sick and you're talking about Europe where it's always raining and wet. When you start feeling that little tickle creep in there, it's the worst feeling in the world is the same.

You know you're in trouble for a week. Yeah, you start drinking tea and drinking hot water and all that sort of stuff. So you're talking about the early days, but now you're playing stadiums with Metallica, which is huge, you choose the other side of the coin. Is this something that we could be seeing more of? Maybe, I mean, it's a huge bill. It's a great idea. Well, obviously, that's up to them. Yeah. I mean, they hold the keys to that, but I think they're happy with as quick as it sold out.

And I think... It's low, it was in like a day or something, right? Yeah. And I know Lars and them went to the radio stations and they said, well, who's the biggest band of that generation that's going to kind of help the draw? And they said, avenged. Because I know that because they called me and said, do we put your name in for the Metallica thing? And the next thing we know, Lars... Radio station. Yeah. So 93x, the guy, Pavel over there, he's a great guy.

So we knew the name we've been put in there. Of course, they're obviously aware of us Metallica. And so, got to call from Lars that you want to do it. Well, yeah, let's do it. But we didn't expect to sell out in 10 minutes. 10 minutes? Yeah. 10 minutes. Now listen, I mean, obviously Metallica is Metallica. That was all us, though. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking, right? It was the way they were announced.

Yeah. Actually, the tickets for Metallica sold out in one minute that tickets for avenged took nine minutes. Yes, nine minutes. It went to a house. Then they found that Johnny Christ is on the show and they actually had about 10,000 refunds. That's really what I hear. That's what I'm hearing. But I mean, so did you speak to Lars about this? I do. We sold out in 10 minutes or like. I hit him up and said that was pretty sick. And he was like, two, 10 minutes. That's awesome.

You know, he's excited. I mean, how could you not be excited? I'm not sure how big you are. That's right. That's right. We played a tour of Slash last year. And we sold out a couple of Gays won in Chicago. And I just saw the picture. It was like, slash, fuzzing, sold out. And I said it to him. It's like, dude, that's the coolest thing I've printed out. Like, yeah, come on, man. He goes, no, he goes to sell out. Is a sell out is a sell out is a sell out. Feels good.

Don't matter if you are playing 100,000 or 100, a sell out means this you can go bigger. Absolutely. You know, and that's what you want. Absolutely. And you think like 10 minutes you think, well, how big could these guys play? You know, it's just crazy. I know a lot of people tell us, could we do this? Yeah. Well, we're going to do night two by ourselves. Well, the next bill is actually going to be asked above Metallica. Yeah, it's going to be a smaller room.

Maybe. Yeah. I think, I mean, it's playing the thousand. But it's great for rock and roll. Like, when you get that, like, that's why I love the Guns and Roses reunion. I loved, you know, the controversy or not, the ACDC with Axel and the band. It sells tickets. Yeah. Which, that's what rock and roll is now. Because we talked about earlier, records don't really, record sales don't really exist anymore. Well, it's very interesting.

You know, we have a lot of friends that do different types of music. And, you know, they have huge social media bases. But it's very hard to sell records. Very hard to do concerts. The only about rock is we're able to kind of keep off the radar. But we do these shows and we're lucky because we have all these bands that are willing to do these big festivals like Rock and the Range or Rock and Rio. And you have bands like Metallica that can still sell out stadiums.

To me, it's the one thing that rock has that no one else does. Which is pretty exciting. People come out to shows. And they love being at the rock shows. And to me, that's, it's just very special. Because if you don't have that, then there's really not that many bright elements to the music industry at all. But live shows are it, man. It's awesome. Yeah, it's a culture. Especially like the metal and hard rock brings everything together. It's like, it's a culture.

You see people out at these festivals and you're like, what is your nine to five? Like, and you just show up and you just got all of a sudden I don't see you anywhere else, but at the festival. You've got to, you've got to cut off your and like, you're ready to go. Dude, when I went to Metallica, that pond one time, I've never seen so many people at Long Hair. Anywhere in Southern California. Like, well, no, it was the pond. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I was like, I was like, where did these people come out of the woodworks? I don't ever see you like every day. I've never seen any of these people. And there's 15,000 people at Long Hair here going crazy. It's just a culture, man. Yeah, it's cool. They do their thing all day long, but they listen to metal and they just want to come out. And when they come out, they come out. And that's a great thing. Yeah, that's the beautiful thing about it.

I'm so glad now with Danny Wimmer festivals over here in this country. Yeah. Finally, we're getting what the people in Europe have been getting for years, which is this great day, two day experience, where people come like, when I saw you guys a download two years ago, you guys headlined, and we were on the next band. I think we were the second band on that stage the next day. And there wasn't as many people as those of you guys, but it was pretty freaking close.

I'm like, you guys just basically just stayed here all night. Oh, yeah. No one's going in, and no one's like telling over, like they were there at 1130. We were on a 12th of the elevator. They're living it. They want. That's what they set up for. They plan for a long time, and they just go in and enjoy some part rock. So that's what I feel. There's a little bit of snobbery, I think, and other genres of people just show up for the headliners. Not so much at the festivals, man. People go all day.

People want to hear new bands, and it's pretty cool. Be a part of the whole experience. How did you feel? Talking about the pros and cons, if there was any about Hill of the King, it definitely puts you on the map bigger, made you a bigger band, to the fact that you did headline download, which is a huge deal, because like you just said, there's Sabbath, there's maid, and there's ACDC, there's the Ramch signs, and those type of bands, Eros Smith.

But the next level, there's none except for now, you guys are finally on that level, which is great. Yeah, I mean, we don't really consider ourselves on that level yet, but we definitely are telling the download, I mean. We're very aware of our situation, where we need other bands that are going to kind of do this with us, or it's going to be, there's going to be some trouble for the future headliners. And people have been saying it for a long time.

You know, people need to, you know, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the idea that radio has really changed a lot. I mean, there's no doubt that when Ozzy was being played on radio, and when, you know, G&R was being played on radio, that has an effect, and the normal fan that's not going to go out and search for those bands and go to the show, they were forced to hear it. And they became rock fans. There's nothing wrong with that.

But when you don't have that outlet, it's hard for the scene to have everybody get into one or two bands and create hundreds of bands. I'm not being them. Yeah, because a lot of people listen to rock now, we're kind of searching out all the bands, and they like this, and they don't like that, and they don't really want to support that. And it's just tougher because there's not as many people listening to rock music, even though the people that are, are great.

But you can't help but admit that if Ozzy Osborne was being played on pop radio today, there would be a lot of young kids listening to Ozzy Osborne. Of course. Instead, there's a lot of people that, unless you're dad listens to it in your cousin, and you've searched it out, then how are you going to hear about the rock bands? It's just really hard. It's difficult. It's almost become an older generation thing, whereas, you know, when I was in high school, Ozzy was played on pop radio.

Exactly. You know, I remember the tune that he would lead to Ford was all over top 40 radio. Yeah. Close my eyes forever. There was always those type of bungeo over here. You know, those type of bands Van Halen always were on that rock radio that was filled with, you know, the other top 40 tunes. It was K&A C for us in Southern California. Sure. 92 CID FM for me and Winnipeg shout out. But I mean, even like, KRock used to play heavier stuff, you know.

They were still playing, you know, Ragey's machines, and they were playing the heavier side, even when punk was big, they were playing the offspring and playing Greeny at the first time. The headies punk, yeah. Yeah, I mean, they were playing what was on the cutting edge, and right now it's definitely not our genre. But where does the VN7 full get played on the radio? Everywhere. I live in California. I live in California so I don't hear it.

Yeah. And if you live in New York, we're in New York now, you don't hear it. That's it. You got to be in Madison, Wisconsin, and, you know, you know, the Fargo North Dakota and those type of places. And you got like things like Octane, which I've seen in here. But yeah, there's no, it's just interesting, you know, it is what it is. And it's really like beating a dead horse when you hear bands complain about it, and this and that talk about it all the time. But to me, it's just, it is what it is.

And I also think bands need to start writing really great songs. Yeah, it will come back. Yeah. If you write great songs. I love the fact that your first single from the record, which is the eight minute to tune is the stage. It's actually 840 now. 840. We added a little bit. We thought it was a little short. This needs another solo in it. That's the title track though. Yeah. Yeah, it's the stage.

So the fact you release that to radio, A is got, it shows you got balls the size of elephants because it's like, I'm sure radio programmers are pissing their pants going, what? Yeah. But for you guys, it's just, you're like, hey, this is what we do. And, you know, like it or not. Well, we're going purely basically on what we think the fans will be most excited about. And there's obviously other things on the record that you could maybe get played in the radio more.

But, and it's no just the radio. It's just, but it's more like, if you want the fans to care about the bands you're playing, then let us do this first. You know, like this to me would speak to me as a kid. It speaks to me more now as a 34 year old adult. Because it's so different. Yeah, exactly. That's why it works. Everyone wants to breath the fresh air. You know? And to be honest, like we brought the song and we're really proud of it.

And it's the one that it's going to be the first song on the record. So that's the first title track. That's the first title track that that's what we did on this record. And this is kind of encompasses it all. Not everything, but it encompasses a lot of it. And now it's like, well, just got it. It's just a no brainer except for the eight minute and forty second part. But see, here's a great story. See, the best thing is time just doesn't matter. It just goes by like that. Time's not real.

It's just a measurement. It's not a real thing. Yeah. But see, here's is a great quote. I'm sure you, if you haven't heard this, you're going to love it. When the Beatles wanted to release A Jude as a single six minutes, whatever seconds, the capital records was like, no one's going to play this. And John, John Lennon said, yeah, they'll play it because it's us. Yeah. It's the Beatles. They'll play it. Yeah. So take it and play it.

Yeah. I mean, and that's the beauty of it because because it's a bench sevenfold. Did you just compare us to the Beatles? I just did. Yes. I'm going to jump out this window right now. Did you spike my water, Johnny Christ? But I mean, that's, that to me is the brilliance of it. Like, if, you know, if it was another band trying to do this, it probably wouldn't get any traction. You guys will get it just because it's a bench sevenfold, we're supposed to do.

Well, I think we've done like a, we have a good relationship with a lot of the radio. You know, right, a lot of radio people. And I think we've had plenty of songs to where a lot of them work. And I think hopefully they give us the little bit of leeway on this and say, well, if this is what they think is going to be, give it a try. See what happens. I can't see putting this out there and it, people going, oh, I can't stand that song because it's too long.

You know, I just don't, they might, there's obviously people that would be like that. But they might have to be retrained. Yeah. You know, it's like Bohemian rap scene, which I put that when you first told me that the singles eight minutes, I'm like, well, yeah, sure sucked when Hey, Jude and Bohemian rap scene failed for those songs. Yeah, I'm pretty sure about him. He was actually a lot shorter than his one. It's five six six six six. I think it's five five five and change. How's it look?

Oh, we looked at it. We like, oh, we're really going to do this. Yeah, we're going to do this. No, Bohemian rap scene feels like, I mean, it's our biggest song ever for radio has been nightmare and that's six and a half minutes. Was there an edit on it? Not for us now. The only edit would be like when it repeats nightmare at the end of the time. Sure. No, we didn't give them an edit and they just play it. They just had to ask that. Well, they put that to get effort out. It's your, yeah.

Yeah. I went in there and we recorded freaking nightmare. You're flipping nightmare. We're flipping nightmare. We got you to say one time that pass the deal, pass the deal. Yeah, yeah. It was like, I'm saying, it's a paint sheet, pass the deal. So I'm just like, oh, yeah, dude, these guys are like, you gotta go up there. We're playing, you know, a Mexico city. And you say, paint sheet, pass the deal instead of your fucking nightmare. And I'm like, dude, no, it's not going to go over.

It's going to go crazy. So I go into it the first person ever and just staring at me. I'm like, oh my god. What does it even mean? My band almost made my fucking nightmare. It's terrible. It was the great of an idea that Matt had ever had. If it didn't start with two P's, it would probably be going up. See, the people hate that too.

Like, when you try and speak the language, like, it happens all the time, it would double the E. If they, if you're, they would try and say someone's word name in Spanish. Or you're just like, no, we want to hear it in English. That's the way that we know it. Yeah. Oh, yeah, dude, I'm gonna say fuck about that. No, no, no. We made you fuck up. I think that it was all good. Pinch of Pasadena. What is it, Pasadena? Pinch A, Pacidilla. Pacidilla. I'm gonna sing that every time.

No. And there's like no music going on there. You know, it's like, oh, Matt, Matt, I said, D. Up on the, up on the riser, just going. Oh, it's definitely on you too. Just feel the bubble bursting. Yeah, dude. It's funny. I was gonna say, Master Puppets is another song that's about eight minutes and 30 seconds that gets played in its entirety. Yeah. So there you go. That's a good one. And so is, is it number tears, not number tears? Is it? Yeah, number tears. Yeah, number tears.

That's the six minutes plus maybe even more. Wait, wait, wait, hold on. I'm sure someone will send us the actual time of number tears. No, number tears like that talk is shared. It's like eight minutes. Is it? Yeah. It's seven minutes and 25 seconds, I don't know. I think it's eight minutes. We're gonna check it out and find it for sure. I'll tell a quick story.

So Charlie Bonanti when he toured with Metallic, actually the tour that Cliff passed away, he was always wondering what James said before the solo and Master Puppets, you know, it's like then, nothing at my cries, Brown, Brown, not enough, right? Seven 25. Seven 25. So he was always asking, like, what is he saying? So he went to Cliff Burton and said, what does James say before the solo and Cliff told him pancakes? No. It's really fixed me. But pancakes, like, that's terrible.

Laughing at my cries. It's really fine, brown pancakes. So yeah, so there you go. Pancakes, a pinch of Pasadena. But almost as good as Axel saying cool ranch dressing. Oh, I love that. We're done. We're done. Oh, yeah. Does he in the actual recorded? Oh, yeah. He's just, if he's not saying that, he's just pronouncing it in a different way, but it sounds cool. No, he says cool ranch dressing. Because if you look at all the lyrics, he just says cool ranch dressing. And what part?

It's been pretty tied up and it's like in a break and he does like a low voice and it says cool ranch dressing. He must have been into it at the time. Cool ranch dressing. Pancakes. That's amazing. Well, the song, the song, I mean, it makes sense with the lyrical content of the song. I mean, some chicken, that's gets tied up. Yeah, some hooker gets tied up. Can I throw some cool ranch dressing? Yeah, sure. Maybe he needs a break and he needs a snack in between banging her. I don't know.

Maybe he needs that. A couple more things that you mentioned before I love the fact that with a bench unfold in the stage, with so much social media and everybody's all over it. And there's like, you know, Instagram and Twitter and Facebook. And you guys basically have none of that. I mean, you have an official account, but there's no M shadows and there's no, you know, Johnny Christ. And is this a concerted thing or you just want to try and be mysterious?

I personally, I don't like talking about how I feel about that stuff because everybody has it. My friends have it. Right. And I don't have anything. I can sit for me. It's just not for me. I have no like want to show everybody what I'm doing or what I think about everything. It's just not for me. Right. But seems to be a whole band addict. Yeah. Well, we also see how we see how things get just crazy.

Like people start caring about how many likes they have and they start caring about how people are responding to things and like, it's almost like this whole, it becomes this thing that it doesn't have to be. It becomes addictive. Yeah. I'm sure it does. And so to me, I honestly just don't want any part of that in my life because I really don't want to have to, as Kanye says, crowdsource Instagram comments.

For instance, for, you know, like, it's like, it's like you get these comments and of course you're going to look at them. And I don't want to live a life where it's commented on all day. And I'm sure there's a way to do it where you can, I just don't know what I would ever share with the world. Like, I just don't want to think it's your celebrity so people would want to know. They want to know. Yeah, but like, I would rather talk about whether it's sports or politics or it's not nice.

I feel like if I did that, people were like, dude, tell us about your band. Yeah. And I don't want to be completely wrapped up with that all day. I like to keep that behind closed doors because I like how our process is very secretive. And it's very, but I love that too. It's what we do. It's like we get, we get in a room together. We all know how we work individually. But no one else knows how anything works in this band. And I kind of like that.

I don't think they should have to pipe their opinions in about it. Yeah. You know, we should know the tricks. Yeah, they're piping their opinions about it and it changes the whole, yeah, the whole dynamic anyway. That's all people do anyway. And you're going to set it up and everyone's going to just not comment on everything you have. I just don't see any reason to do it. I guess they wouldn't necessarily bother me. I just don't see the plus side of the benefit. Yeah. To me, I totally agree.

It's just, you know, I would definitely, I understand what Instagram does and everything with that and Facebook and all this, all the stuff. I'm going to sound really old by the way, well, I'm talking about this. I understand everything that does, it gets everything out there and it's great. But for me, I don't want everyone to know everything about me at the end of the day. Oh, they would hate you. They would despise me. Every little girl out there that was like, oh, Johnny Cruis me favorite.

They'd be like, that guy's a piece of shit. How did you get the name Johnny Cruis by the way? Actually, Zach was the one that came up with that idea. Yeah. And I was like, okay, I like it. And we just went with it. No, Matt was the real reason. Zach came up with it. I don't know. I just called Johnny Christ. I don't know, man. It was before I was legally able to drink wine, so I don't think I had anything to do with that. Johnny, you'd be Johnny Merlot. Cool. Very way cooler.

Now that we've just changed all of our names. Now that we've changed all of our names. We've changed all of our names. We've changed all of our names. Who was the mindset quickly behind that? The names? Yeah. Well, our favorite bands had names, you know. Guns, fire, hormones. Guns, fire, hormones. I was funny, I was in the car, they'd go into meetup with a friend. And I was in the car, they're talking about the Guns, the Rose Show coming up at MetLife.

And I was thinking about how everyone gives us shit for our names. She's like, Guns and Rose, they're back together. Axel's slashing Duff. And I'm like, it's awesome. It's so bizarre. And you think about that. You definitely think about that. You know who they are and everything about them. Sure. Just off that. By the name. Like 100%. I always felt bad for Stephen Adler, because he didn't get one. It was Izzy Axel Duff's slash Stephen. I'm worried about what Brooks is going to do now.

That's what I said. He has whackerman as a lot. Before we just say his name is now W. Ackerman. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. I like it. So did you get shadows just because it's creepy or? I don't know, man. You're 17, whatever. I'm 17 and whatever. Now you're M for the rest of your life. No, I'm for the rest of my life. Last question. What's your favorite songs on the new record? It's hard to say that sometimes, but today. Yeah. Right? It's always going to change.

Mine, personal right now, and I know it's just fresh. But a sunny disposition right now to me is it just has so much flavor to it that it really, it just makes me smile when I listen to it. And that's, I love that song. There's a lot of other great songs, but that one just makes me smile. So right now, that's what I've been doing. What's your favorite song to play live out of all your songs? Out of all of our songs? Shit. Probably a little piece of heaven. It's such a great thing.

It's just, again, it's because I like the fun shit. And it's just, it's a fun song to play. Yeah. M? My favorite song on the record would be exist or the stage. And my favorite song to play live, buried alive. Oh, yeah. It's a great tune. It's a fun one to play. It's going to be hard now. Like, what songs do you drop when you have to put together the set list? That's always. I'm trying to think long term on this at this point. And it might be smart to play a lot of heavy on the new stuff.

That way, the second time you come through, you can play more hits based. I mean, if you do it too quick, then you're stuck. Then you're like, OK, do we play the new record? Right. Two years after it's out. And I think Maiden's done a really good job of keeping things interesting because they go heavy on new stuff. But they also put a lot of the old stuff in there. But I think they've done it to where everyone of their tours is very themed and you know what you're going to get. It's cool.

Or I think a lot of other bands get stuck playing the same songs over and over. Then you go to a show that's very, you know, very samey. Yeah, yeah. But you respect that about me. You know what you're going to get. Total. It is going to be heavy on new material. And I like the people bitch about all the time. I'm like, why would they spend so much time on a new record and not want to play it? And they put out good record. And it's great. And the book of Souls is awesome.

Yeah. So just sit back and enjoy it, man. You know. You know, like, as the band gets bigger, there's always going to be people that don't get the new stuff or they don't want to try to get into it. And you got to think emotionally people are going to be attached to whatever record they got into first. And that's never going to change. So and I get, because I've gone and seen some classic rock bands recently, I went and saw scorpions and queens right.

And they play, they're very heavy on the old stuff. And I get it. For that type of crowd, I get it. But I would like to kind of start conditioning people to give them things that they don't necessarily know what they're going to get. And if they do, it's going to be new with old or you're going to get all old or you're going to get this era, you're going to get that. That might be cool to start doing, you know. So for right now, I don't know what we're going to drop by.

We'll deal with it when you get there. All right, man, M. Shadows, the coolest kind of engine, Johnny Christ, the most despised. New album. Absolutely. It's awesome. Thanks, guys. Thanks, dude. All right, a Vinch 7 Fold brand new studio album, The Stage is out now. The big surprise release last Friday, October 28th. Nobody knew about it. They just dropped it. And what a huge, a huge kerfuffle it's causing. Everybody's freaking out over the fact that new album exists and how great it is.

If you haven't heard the stage and you like a Vinch 7 Fold, go check it out now. It's one of the best records they've ever done. It's fast, it's heavy, it's intricate, great tempo changes, great singing, great guitar, playing great drumming. Everything you want in a Vinch 7 Fold is on this record. The stage is out now. Okay. They're going to keep evolving. And that means more music for you, all right? Like they said, this album is going to continue to grow.

There's going to be new songs coming out on this album of the next few months. You're going to want to check it out and you can get it now. You don't have to wait. You can do it right now. Go get it at iTunes and get it your favorite record store. Yeah, they still exist. And of course, on Amazon. If you get it on Amazon, if you buy the stage on Amazon, please use those talk as Jericho links to make your pouches support Vinch 7 Fold and talk as Jericho in one fell swoop in one click.

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We got another hit in our hands with Kill in the Town, Storm and Cyrus. If you're interested in how the business works, a PhD in breaking down matches events, then you need to download Kill in the Town every Tuesday. Storm and Cyrus are completely on opposite sides of the spectrum. They hate each other. They love each other, but they have great, great conversations. They're very, very intelligent. You got to check it out. This week's episode, Storm and Cyrus did a deep dive on cutting promos.

What works and what doesn't. They had a special guest from locker room policeman, Paul, the mall, or Lazy Me. What's a policeman in the locker room? Go check it out. All right, it's blood, green, and it was a blood gets and muppets. I can't remember what it was. It lost the fact that when Lance Storm was in the WWE, he was told to cut promos like Sam the Eagle from the muppets. So go check it out. And don't forget Team Tiger, awesome, hilarious.

Every week, some completely irrelevant pop culture show, another hit. And of course, keep it 100 with Conan. The biggest hit on the Jericho Network, the flagship show. Go check all those out, subscribe and stars. And don't forget March 15, 2017, it's the biggest podcast ever, ever, ever, ever. When Nick Foley joins Talkers Jericho, the countdown rolls on 129 days and counting, speaking of big podcasts, I got another huge Talkers Jericho live.

Coming up with AJ Styles, November 20th at the Bassett Theater in Toronto. You don't want to miss it, get your tickets at markupmoments.com. There's still some VIP meet and greet tickets available. And I still think there's some tickets left for the brunch that AJ are hosting in our before the event. Come have some breakfast with us. Go to markupmoments.com for tickets. November 20th in Toronto, Talkers Jericho live with AJ Styles. All right, thank you for listening.

Keep listening for the 60 second AP News headlines. I'm going to next and coming up on Friday. The Rock n' Roll continues on Talkers Jericho with a Rock n' Roll Hall of Famer, a true legend of Pioneer. Alice Cooper is going to be here. Alice Cooper for president. He's talking about his incredible groundbreaking career. You hear how, why he's running for president, what his platform is, what he thinks needs to be done in America.

Plus, he's talking about his incredible groundbreaking career, how he came up with the Alice looks, the props and theatrics on stage, the guillotine, the moving Frankenstein monster. You hear how he does those tricks. His 47 year partnership with manager and talkers Jericho alumni, Chef Gordon and his friendship with John Lennon. This is living, breathing rock history. You don't want to miss it. Alice Cooper for president, this Friday on Talkers Jericho. Who brings you the biggest guests? I do.

Stay hard, stay hungry and a big boy. We'll see on Friday. Listen to event sevenfold to stage and do it now. You can download new episodes of Talkers Jericho every Wednesday and Friday at podcast1.com. Okay, keep your eyes closed. Okay. I want to show you my first ever painting. All right. Okay. Open your eyes. Oh, that's a lot of colors and shades. So be honest. What do you think? Well, I like how if you switched to Geico, you could save hundreds of dollars on cart insurance.

Oh, yeah, that's true. Yeah. Here, why don't I hold your paintbrush while you call them? Geico because saving 15% or more on car insurance is always a great answer. It's your last chance to get great holiday savings at guitar center like a Simmons SD550 electronic drum kit just $3.99. Add your choice of AKGK 52 headphones or a Sure SM 48 mic each just $39. Plus the newest and hottest guitars, drums, keys and more. Exclusive gear you can't get anywhere else. Special financial.

Lessons for the beginner on your list. Give cards the perfect present for every musician. So hurry in and find your sound at guitar center. Trump's victory. I met Donahue with an AP news minute. It's always a lot of fun when you win. If you work hard and lose, that's not acceptable. At the White House, President Trump welcomed Republicans from the House and the Senate who passed a bill overhauling the tax code.

The president says the middle class will be seeing the effects of this bill very soon. The typical family of four earning $75,000 will see an income tax cut of more than $2,000. They're going to have $2,000. And that's in my opinion going to be less than the average. You're going to have a lot more than that. The tax overhaul bill also includes a corporate tax cut.

We have companies pouring back into our country and that means jobs and it means really the formation of new young, beautiful, strong companies. Democrats have criticized the tax package as a giveaway to corporations in the rich. The tax cuts for businesses are permanent under this tax bill, but reductions for individuals and families will expire after a decade. I'm Ed Donahue.