ARTISTdirect’s Interview With M Shadows: Writing Avenged Sevenfold’s New Album, Motion Capture, “Carry On” And More!

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.