This story was originally published in June 2010.Ĭoming home from two years of touring in support of their self-titled album, Avenged Sevenfold started work on their follow-up.AVENGED SEVENFOLD's Grammy Museum performance of "So Far Away" can be seen below. By mid December all the music for the planned concept record had been written and demoed, and the band was raring to hit the studio.
Then disaster struck: On December 28th, Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan was found dead at his home. An autopsy at the time was inconclusive, but in June, a coroner's report concluded that he died from an accidental overdose of prescription painkillers and alcohol. The report also noted that Sullivan had an enlarged heart, a "significant condition," which the coroner said, may have contributed to his death. Needless to say, his bandmates - and friends for nearly two decades - were crushed. Video of Avenged Sevenfold - Nightmare DAKRNESS SURROUNDING It was only after an intense period of grieving and introspection that they finally decided that they needed to complete what they call "Jimmy's masterpiece" and release the album, Nightmare, as a tribute to their fallen brother. SHADOWS We started writing, like, in August, after that Sonisphere show, but we were very lackadaisical. It was just, like, you come over here, we might start drinking, or playing beer pong, or do something stupid, and then we wouldn't write at all. And then at certain times we'd write and get crazy and just on and on. So then, the day before my wedding - I remember this very vividly which is kind of a funny story - I had to be in Palm Springs with that night and I was riding home from basketball - I play basketball on the street, like every night - and I get this idea for a song and I pull out my BlackBerry and I started singing in it. And I came up with the line, "It's your fucking nightmare." And I just came up with, like, every single part for that song. I sang it while I was riding a bike on my BlackBerry, and I came home and I started laying everything down. I laid down that whole song in its entirety, with the vocal melodies and everything, without the guitar solo and I played every instrument. And I remember going to my wedding, and we were late as fuck. I remember showing Jimmy the song on my wedding day and he's just like, "Fuck yeah!" Gives me a high five, "This is going to be sick." And everyone else is like, "What?" 'Cause it sounded so stupid, me playing everything, like, whispering in the mic 'cause I didn't want to know I was in there fucking around. But that song was written, like, the day before my wedding, and I showed it to Jimmy and I remember him just flipping out. We all got drunk, and he's all, "Let's go show everyone the new song." And so I'm playing this demo, we're all hammered, and everyone's like, "Dude, that's awesome, bro." Like, everyone's fucked up.
It was just kind of a fucking story at the wedding. And I went on my honeymoon and when I got back we just continued writing. ZACKY VENGEANCE For the writing, what we wanted to do was make this album much longer and adventurous. We wanted to get into the studio and fucking do what we did on City of Evil where we're fucking slaves to the grind, pour every ounce of our fucking heart and soul. It just felt like, now that we'd won those fans over, it was time to give them something that they'd appreciate and understand, because they didn't catch on with City of Evil, what was going on there, they didn't catch on that we spent fucking 16 hours a day in the studio and were exhausted afterward. So this was our second chance to give them that album: long, fucking adventurous, fucking over the top. And we wanted to bring it back to a dark place, we wanted to take them on a fucking dark journey 'cause at the time, you could sense frustration on all corners of the Earth: fucking financial institutions, people are losing all their money, other people are rich for no reason.
SHADOWS The initial record was going to be a concept record and the concept was, you know, the whole state of the world right now: economy, racism, schools, religion. All these crazy things that I was going to try and pack into it. It was kind of like The Wall meets Operation: Mindcrime, like, crazy-like type thing. VENGEANCE Jimmy was writing more on this album than he had ever written.
If you played something for him - everything that people were writing, he'd love - he would add something to it, or work his ass off to make sure that we could use the part. He'd go to Matt's house and lay down drums every day, or he'd go over to Brian's house, you know, they'd get drunk, write, and then at fucking 4 in the morning he'd come over to my house and fucking play on the piano and we'd sit there and hang out.
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