Avenged Sevenfold Guitarist

Avenged Sevenfold Guitarist Says ‘Hail To The King’ Is The New ‘Back In Black’

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Avenged Sevenfold guitarist Synyster Gates has likened the band’s new album ‘Hail To The King’ to classic albums by rock icons Led Zeppelin and AC/DC.
 
In a recent interview with The Music, Gates said the band wanted the album to be a bigger and better rock album than any that had come before it: “We wanted this thing to be like the modern version of Led Zepplin’s ‘IV’ or AC/DC’s ‘Back In Black,’” he said. “And I think we achieved that, and I’m really proud of that.”
 
Gates explained that the band had matured and was now more focused than ever on writing a solid and lasting album: “When we started off [in the band] it was kind of like, ‘Let’s just have fun in the studio and write a bunch of ridiculous shit.’ And we’d fill albums to the brim with crazy guitar solos and crazy vocals and everything we could put into them. I think that’s just being young and having fun, but maturity needs to set in. And that maturity tells us what a song should really convey.”
 
He continued: “We’ve always felt that we write those epic, grandiose songs. But this time we wanted to do it in a different format. We wanted to have an album that sounded regal, but with relentless, heavy-hitting grooves.
 
In order to create their own ‘Back In Black,’ Gates said that all the band’s members needed to adhere to a strict discipline: “…we stuck with the game plan, and stuck with songs until everybody loved them. It was very difficult within those parameters, because we’d never had that. We could always write whatever we wanted before; that’s one of the beauties of being in a progressive band.”

Click here to read the full interview.