Deathbat News

USA Today have shared an article in which they spoke to M Shadows about Avenged Sevenfold’s involvement with Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2 with the song “Carry On,” gaming with his clan, how the new album is coming along and the front-man confirms a sneaking suspicion amongst fans. A congratulations is in order!

Once players finish the single-player campaign, they see the game’s villain Raul Menendez and one of the main characters Sgt. Frank Woods meet an animated version of the band backstage before joining them onstage to perform the song. Eventually, the entire cast of the game dances to the tune. “Carry On was more like these guys coming together at the end and being buddies after they have pretty much killed each others’ families,” Shadows says. “I’m proud of it and I think it’s fun and it’s actually just really cool to be in a Call of Duty game.”

Avenged Sevenfold has a new album in the works, so Shadows is busy writing. “It’s a big record for us. … All I can say is that we are really excited about it and it’s sounding really good to us,” he says. “It’s definitely different like all of our records are all different from each other. That’s fun. We are just exploring our musical boundaries.”

Shadows says that these days “I write about eight hours a day, five days a week and then play games the rest of the night and hang out with my son,” he says. “Fans don’t need to be worried that I am just playing Call of Duty.”

Thanks Justin for sending this in.

ARTISTdirect’s Editor-In-Chief Rick Florino spoke exclusively with M Shadows about writing “Carry On” for Call Of Duty: Black Ops 2, filming the motion capture work for Avenged Sevenfold’s appearance in the game, the appeal of playing Call Of Duty, writing the new album and the ‘cool direction’ it’s going in, what the front-man is currently listening to (DBN NOTE: Lana Del Rey’s “Born To Die” album (including the Paradise Edition) is incredible), keeping the writing process balanced, visual lyrics and more. You can read the entire interview here.

Has “Carry On” sparked the writing process even more?
– After “Carry On”, we took off August and most of September. At the end of September, we started writing for the record. I’m really happy with it. It’s a very cool direction that we’re going in. There’s kind of an old school feel, but it’s still modern. It doesn’t feel dated. It’s going to be the next evolution of Avenged Sevenfold. We’re excited about it.

On Nightmare, you balanced writing big hooks with the epic, expansive nature of the songs masterfully. Metallica’s one of the only other bands in history to do that. Is that balance between slamming choruses and progressive intricacy in mind?
– It’s totally in my mind. When you look at bands like Pantera, Megadeth, and Metallica, they’re way closer in their songwriting than you would think. They’re all the same sorts of riffs. You can tell the way they write songs is very AC/DC-based. Metallica gets a little more melodic. Pantera gets a little more brutal. Megadeth has more of those creepy, melodic minor types of scales. It’s riff-based. When you have a combination of that, which our band kind of does because we grew up on all those bands, you have to make sure there’s a balance between the aggressive and the melodic and the stripped-down songs and the songs that are more progressive. There’s always a balance. You have to weigh that balance on what the song needs and the album needs. At some point, you need to say, “We have a bunch of long songs, we need some compact songs”. At another point, you need to say, “Let’s make a fucking crazy eleven-minute song!” It comes to making what you want to hear.