Quotes from Zacky Vengeance

I think everyone's trying to come up together and bring up other bands along the way, and we've always been really blessed to have bands like Metallica and Iron Maiden take us under their wing and say nice things about us.

You always have to try new things, and that's the one thing that we've learned from all the greats - every album isn't gonna be every fan's favorite, but as long as you keep switching it up and making new fans, it's really about being persistent.

There was a time when metal ruled the world and I don't see any reason why it should be different now.

I think we are really in touch with what's going on around us in the world of music, trying to push the bar forward and try new and exciting things that our fans can react to.

We've shown everyone we are musicians first and foremost: we'll produce our own albums and play The 100 Club. We earned people's respect. We're not the band on MTV, wearing a bunch of makeup. We've proved we're the real deal.

A great way to get your rhythm playing together is to work with a drummer, preferably someone that has a good groove and plays solidly in time.

When we were recording, sometimes I wondered if what we were doing would even be possible to play live.

We wanna be on the frontlines of everything new and exciting. The old world order of putting out four singles before you release an album is so boring to us.

The first review our band ever got - when I was 17 years old and we had just released our first EP, and this tiny little magazine wrote a review on it, and for that month, we were the best album of the month, and we were also the worst album of the month. We won best and worst album of the month in the same magazine.

I think there's a whole group of kids out there that don't relate to the glitz and glamour of hanging out in clubs and partying all the time. So I think some people are just more real than that, and I think our fans are those kind of kids that need something to relate to, and I think we're the band to do it.

We really wanted to create an album that had no boundary or limit to it. There's nothing to say that we couldn't release a song that belongs on 'The Stage' 20 years into our career. We want it to be an album that constantly grows with what we want to do, and that's what we did.

We're very historically tried and true when it comes to our albums. We pick the best songs; we get rid of the songs we feel don't fit on the album, and we don't work on remixing or remastering albums.

We've never tried to write radio hits. If I hear our song on the radio, it's cool, and I'm proud, but it's never a goal.

There's always going to be haters, but those people are few. We're not too worried about it.

This country is filled with remarkable people. One of my best friend's families is from Iran, and they're the most American family of all time. Some of the best people that I've ever met are immigrants.

I remember when I was a kid, every time the Beatles were on the radio, my dad would say he'd give me a dollar if I could tell him what band it was. So by the time I was about nine, I knew to just say 'The Beatles,' and I'd get a dollar out of it.

I worked a lot on our album cover, and I didn't just want to post it on our website one day and move on. We wound up breaking it into 18 pieces and hiding them on fan sites all over the Internet and then posting clues, so fans could put together the puzzle.

Everyone likes to have fun. But when I look back on my life, I'm not going to say, 'Oh, we're the crazy party animals.' I'll look back and say, 'Wow, we did take this seriously.' We had fun while we were out doing it, but it's just the only thing you read about: 'They're a bunch of party animals.' To be honest, that's not true.

We like to be in touch with our fans, but we're also very private. 'Cause, to us, it's not about Zacky or M. Shadows or Synyster Gates. It's about Avenged Sevenfold; it's more important than any one of us.

Just by nature, we're always filled with so many ideas and want to cram as many ideas into a song as we can, and I think that gave us a lot of our signature sound.

When you start running out of things to do on a guitar, you have to find other ways of making music with your instrument.

In terms of content and instrumentation, I feel we have been extremely ambitious on every one of our albums going back to high school. We were the first screaming hardcore band to put a big ballad on our record.

When we called each other and got the call that Jimmy had died, literally, it all ended right there. Everything we've ever known as human beings, everything we've ever known as a band, changes at that moment, and you can't think clearly.

Basically, everything I've learned on guitar, I've learned from listening to my favorite albums. I never had any formal training. My teachers were Dimebag Darrell and Slash and the guys in Rancid and Slayer.