Synyster Gates's dad, Brian Haner Sr. (aka "Papa Gates"), is better known as "Guitar Guy", warm-up act and musical accompaniment for Jeff Dunham, in addition to having done some work with Frank Zappa. He actually has a cameo in almost every album of the band.
The Rev's first kit was a series of toy drums till the age of 13 when he got a real one.
Tropes:
Author's Saving Throw: When the band released the single for their new song "Mad Hatter", it was criticized by fans for its lackluster and rather uneven mix, especially when compared to their previous studio album. Less than a week after the track was released M. Shadows announced via Reddit that they heard the fan outcry (they realized the problem when they heard the song on the radio themselves) and were working on a new mix to replace the old version heard before, effectively replacing the old mix a week after its debut. He then offered a free download link for those who already purchased the "Mad Hatter" single or the Black Reign EP beforehand.
Black Sheep Hit: The country ballad "Dear God", the Surprisingly Gentle Song "Warmness On The Soul", and Power Ballad "So Far Away" for many fans. Coincidentally, "Seize The Day" didn't get that kind of reaction in 2005-2006 despite being the only soft track in City of Evil.
Channel Hop: Their first two albums were originally published by Hopeless Records, and they moved to Warner Bros. Records for City of Evil for distribution purposes. And even then, their first album was released by Good Life Recordungs. It was then re-issued a year later by Hopeless.
Creative Differences: Purportedly the reason the band parted ways with Arin in 2015, only two years after he officially joined the band for the recording of Hail to the King.note He was only a live drummer before that and didn't take part in the album's writing process. According to Zacky, when they tried to write music with him "he didn't have that compositional style [they] were used to," and they considered replacing him as early as 2014, when they started jamming with Brooks Wackerman. Arin's side was that he was creatively stifled with them and felt like a glorified drum machine when he recorded Hail to the King and kept trying to add more flair and make things more interesting, but was always told to simplify it. While Arin himself was not pleased at all to be fired, he later admitted that he was creatively more in sync with his new band, Islander (which he also left after two years, for family reasons this time).
Creator Backlash: Matt admitted that he's not too fond of "Girl I Know" and "Unbound (The Wild Ride)" nowadays, finding them a bit too cheesy. And according to him, the band has never played "Natural Born Killer" because they find it too generic.
Synyster Gates has not been shy about his dislike for "Beast and the Harlot", citing it as the song "fans love but they hate playing".
Creator Breakdown: Before the album was produced at that. Suffice to say, when Jimmy passed away, the band was horribly devastated, working on the album without not just their drummer, but best friend. These emotions, as well as the immense shock of Jimmy's passing is what lead to arguably their darkest album, Nightmare.
Died During Production: Jimmy died leaving only demos and blueprints of his drum parts for the Nightmare album. In the end they were recorded by his idol Mike Portnoy.
Doing It for the Art: While they were making The Stage, M. Shadows decided that he wanted to do a cover of Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here"… and then every band member picked a song that they wanted to cover. The covers completely diverge from the band's usual style, being much Lighter and Softer, but they felt like it and put them out entirely for free the following year. They ended up compiled in the Deluxe edition of the album.
Lying Creator: In late 2016 wrestling star (and friend of the band) Chris Jericho "leaked" a date for a new album called Voltaic Oceans, coming out in December. The album came out in October and was actually called The Stage. It's because they wanted to surprise the fans and give away as little as possible before the album's release. Then they lied again in several interviews in June 2017, claiming that they would never cover a song again. A few weeks later, they started to release a whole series of covers.
Newbie Boom: City of Evil really revealed them to a wide audience after a few years of relative confidentiality. Hail to the King also did that to a lesser extent, despite being one of their more contested efforts among fans.
Pre-Order Bonus: The track "Lost It All" can only be acquired through pre-ordering the Nightmare album on iTunes.
Promoted Fanboy: Arin Ilejay was a fan of the band before being recruited for session playing in 2011 and becoming an official member in 2013 when Hail to the King was made. Alas his tenure was short-lived, as while all his bandmates acknowledged his skills and human qualities, his style and artistic vision didn't quite mesh with the other members'. He later described it as being "inside the band, but outside at the same time."
The Pete Best: The band's first three bassists (Matt Wendt, Justin Sane and Dameon Ash) are very often forgotten. Justin did in fact play on Sounding the Seventh Trumpet, but the band didn't gain any mainstream success until Johnny Christ joined the band. Justin had to be let go because he suffered brain damage in a suicide attempt, and M Shadows has described his post-recovery persona as "constantly on an acid trip". Meanwhile, Matt Wendt has made his own life and is still friends with the band.
Subverted by Zacky. Avenged Sevenfold were a four-man band on the original release of Sounding the Seventh Trumpet, with Zacky playing lead guitar. Syn wasn't added until the re-release (where he only played in To End the Rapture), although fans tend to assume he was always the band's lead guitarist and Zacky was always the rhythm guitarist.
Scully Box: Johnny Christ had to stand on one for the video of Nightmare.
Schedule Slip: They started to work on their eighth album as early as 2018 and initially intended to released it in the following year. In the end it took a bit longer but the writing phase was completed and recording was ready to start in 2020… just in time for the Covid pandemic to hit, making it very hard to record the orchestral parts because of the lockdowns and social distancing rules. That would continue in 2021, but even after the restrictions started to be lifted and concerts were allowed again the band gave very few updates and the album would not see a release date until March 2023, when the band scheduled it for release in June. With all this, they worked on this one album for as long as it took them to release their first three.
Sequel Gap: Life Is But a Dream... released on June 2, 2023, over six and a half years after The Stage, which came out in October 2016, by far the longest gap in album releases in the band's career.
In an interview with Modern Drummer in 2006, The Rev had said that he planned on exponentially going more and more over the top in technicality in each subsequent release after City Of Evil. Instead, the Self-Titled Album was a much more simple New Sound Album, and he died before Nightmare where they began to move back towards Progressive Metal, and with The Rev's stated influences (Frank Zappa, King Crimson...) it is quite likely that they would go further and further in that direction as well as getting more experimental. He also had said elsewhere that he wanted to re-form Pinkly Smooth, his and Synyster's really weird side project, and re-record their album Unfortunate Snort as he'd compared it's recording quality to that of a demo. He was also seriously entertaining the idea of writing new material for it right around the time when he died.
Song-wise, "A Little Piece of Heaven" was not planned to be part of the Self-Titled Album; M. Shadows later revealed in his "Wikipedia, Fact or Fiction" interview that the song was initially gonna be part of a Halloween EP, similar to what AFI did. It was through his persuasion when they were about to do the actual recording of the album, on the condition that The Rev (who created the rough ideas for the song in the first place) would be the one to fully-supervise the production, which made sure that it did.
Shadows: No one really wanted to work on it, because it was a big ordeal to work on. Even at one point, Jimmy said "We shouldn’t even record Big Bear (the song’s Working Title); I don’t even wanna record it." When we went to record for real, I was like "Dude… We got to record Big Bear, dude; if not for any other reason but I wanna listen to it."
Nightmare was originally planned as a dark concept album about a young American disconnected from society and living various nightmares. After The Rev's death though, most of the original lyrics were discarded, leaving "Nightmare", "Danger Line" and "Fiction" the only songs left untouched. The Rev also was also going to sing a lot more, but most of his demo vocals weren't intelligible enough to be used in the final record (as shown by the Buried Alive demo released later on). Also, the "Tonight we all die young" epilogue in Save Me was initially supposed to be the chorus.
According to this interview, the spoken part on "Exist", which closes The Stage, was initially supposed to be a recording of Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot speech. When that fell through, they contacted Neil Degrasse Tyson instead. M. Shadows also wanted the song to be entirely instrumental, but Gates insisted on having vocals.
The B-side "Dose" was originally supposed to be an epic revenge story that served as a Sequel Song to "Roman Sky", but it was reworked into a simpler song and left out of the album.
"Fiction" had long been planned before Jimmy's death and it's inclusion on Nightmare: Jimmy had written it and had been working on it during his tenure in Pinkly Smooth and wanted to include it on the self titled, but the other members had already included the songs on that album. This lead to Jimmy finishing it up and perfecting it (with his vocals too) for Nightmare and had told Matt that that was "the last song on the record", under the name "Death". And then three days later, he passed. Ouch.
Word of God: The song and video for "Bat Country" are both confirm to be based on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. This should be obvious to anyone who's seen the movie or read the book, even if the title of the song didn't give it away.
Working Title: "Big Bear" for A Little Piece of Heaven.
, jokingly commented that they already did that one.