“They can do whatever they want, and they chose to make this buck-wild album”: Avenged Sevenfold’s Zacky Vengeance on being inspired by Metallica’s most maligned album
In the Metallica discography, there’s one album that attracts critics more than any other, and that’s 2003’s St. Anger.
The record – which followed 1997’s Reload and the band’s 1998 compilation album Garage Inc. – has divided the Metallica fanbase since it arrived 23 years ago, with many critical of its off-kilter mix and, in particular, the sound of Lars Ulrich’s snare drum.
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But inspiration often comes from unusual places, as discovered by Avenged Sevenfold guitarist Zacky Vengeance, who praises the album in a new interview on WRIF’s Meltdown.
Avenged Sevenfold have toured numerous times with Metallica since the early 2000s, most recently on their 2017 WorldWired stadium tour.
“Honestly, and this is gonna be controversial, but we were touring in a van. And we were driving across the country playing small shows, and it was right at the time when St. Anger came out, and that was the most divisive Metallica album since Load and Reload, and since the Black Album,” Vengeance says [via Ultimate Guitar].
“And you look back and people were like, ‘What are they doing with the Black Album.’ ‘What are they doing with Load? And then with St. Anger… it was the craziest sounding [album]. And then we fell in love with it.”
He continues: “It might not be our favourite Metallica album, but the thought behind it and the fact that it was so different and it had to be listened to, and they were just going for this thrashy raw sound using tones that weren’t perfect…
“They can do whatever they want – they chose to go and just make this buck-wild album. And it was, like, ‘If Metallica can do that, then we can do that.’”
Avenged Sevenfold’s penchant for experimentation has caused division among their fanbase over the course of their career. The arrival of their third album City of Evil in 2005 brought mainstream success, but also alienated some fans due to its stylistic departure from their previous record, Waking the Fallen.
“When that record first came out, our fans on Waking the Fallen were very bummed on it,” frontman M Shadows said in 2021. They were like, this isn’t Waking the Fallen 2. This isn’t even screaming and singing, this is all singing. Matt’s voice has changed. They’re doing way more solos – it’s much more over the top.”
And in 2023, he commented on the backlash to the band’s most recent album Life Is But A Dream…: “There are so many psychological things that go into if people like records or not or if they don’t or what they’re listening to at the time. And it’s not really our job to figure that out; it’s just our job to put something out that we totally back and we appreciate. And we’ll see where it goes. It’s hard to really talk about it, ‘cause there’s really no right or wrong answer. It’s okay to hate this record.”
The post “They can do whatever they want, and they chose to make this buck-wild album”: Avenged Sevenfold’s Zacky Vengeance on being inspired by Metallica’s most maligned album appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
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