Quotes from Johnny Christ

The fans have always been die-hard and awesome. That's why we do a lot of the things we do.

You can definitely tell the record was made for the time that it was and on the budget that it was. 'Waking the Fallen,' I mean. We think that it is cool. It serves its purpose. It serves its time. We don't want to remaster it or anything like that.

You really have to play with the space in a riff so it can be allowed to breathe.

It wasn't until high school that I realized Avenged Sevenfold was picking up locally.

We've always kind of tried to keep the mystique. We don't wanna give everybody everything. You give 'em too much, it's just white noise. When we do say something, we want it to be an event. When we go out and do things, we want it to be an event and kind of keep everything else behind closed doors.

We wanted to do something different and have a surprise release. At first, naturally, the label was getting a little scared about that, because they wanna sell records, and a surprise release means it might not go as quickly.

There was a time when we were in a van and handing out the CDs at Warped Tour. We had a two-song EP that we were just handing out for free just to promote ourselves. That was on the 'Waking the Fallen' record, and we were just going around and handing out the CDs and stuff like that.

Well, the thing is, I actually have a fear of horses, so I wouldnt make a very good cowboy.

When you're concentrating on just the music, you're not thinking about anything else.

When I got into songs like 'Exist,' I was like, 'Okay, this riff has some bass sweeping in it, I'm definitely going to have to use a pick... but I guess I'll have to learn how to sweep first!'

If it weren't for this, I'd probably be working a normal job and playing on the weekends for 10 people at the Irvine Spectrum.

We have a song, 'Welcome to the Family' - we realized for the first time in our lives that people go through this every day around the world. There is someone very close to them that they're losing, every day. That song is, 'We know how you're feeling.'

This one time I stayed up way past my bedtime... man that was scary.

These fans are the reason why we're here. They're awesome and very crazy. They love Avenged Sevenfold, and we love them. Having that is rare.

Not a lot of hard rock bands are just letting it all be - they're adding a lot of samples on things, or effects or whatever - and we just wanted the drums to be raw so you could really hear what Brooks Wackerman is capable of.

You can have the best riff in the world, but if the drums behind it just ain't vibing it, it's not gonna be the greatest riff, right? So you've gotta have someone there that can really bring that to life.

When it comes right down to it, no, we're not religious at all.

We've never been shy to admit that Metallica is a huge influence in our lives and on our music.

I've always had influences from all over the place, like Mr. Bungle and Primus. As a band, we try not to focus too much on where it's coming from, because we're always listening to music.

The importance of first-week sales has kind of diminished, in our opinion, in the industry, and we don't really know what it really means anymore. It is what it is in the industry. And for us, it's all about the endgame, not where it begins.

Kerrang asked us to do a heavy metal tribute to one of our favorite heavy metal bands. We had already been jamming out on 'Walk,' so we're like, 'OK. We'll record it for you guys.'

We are just happy to be together and out and traveling the world together.

We were about ready to go out on the road with Maiden, and Kerrang asked us to do an Iron Maiden tribute song. While we were home, we recorded that. And that was it.

It's a trip now that other bands are saying that they look up to us. In my mind, I'm still 18 years old trying to emulate Pantera in my bedroom.