Flesh for fantasy
Avenged Sevenfold revel in the pleasures of sex, drugs, light bondage, and maybe even watersports, but they have only one true desire: total world domination.
by dan epstein
photography by stephen stickler
No way! Billy Idol’s on Warped?” Avenged Sevenfold’s drummer, known simply as the Reverend, has just found out that his band will share the main stage at this year’s Vans Warped Tour with the preeminent pop-punk superstar of the Eighties, and boy, is he stoked about it. Grinning from behind mirrored aviator shades, the Reverend pauses to reflect upon the news. “That’s totally rad,” he says. “I wonder if he still parties?”
Mr. Idol, please allow Revolver to offer you a bit of unsolicited advice: Stay as far away as you can from Avenged Sevenfold’s tour bus. These tattooed dudes from Huntington Beach, California, treat the Mötley Crüe autobiography The Dirt like an instructional manual, routinely reveling in the sort of booze-fueled, substance-abusing, groupie-shagging post-show antics that could spell serious trouble for a comeback-minded rocker who’s old enough to be their father. Don’t believe us? Just ask them yourself.
“We’re going to try and do as much drugs as possible on Warped Tour,” the Reverend promises. “If you want to meet us and talk to us, bring drugs.”
“And hot girls,” adds bassist Johnny Christ, helpfully.
“Yeah, hot girls and drugs,” affirms the Reverend. “That’s the way to go.”
Avenged Sevenfold do absolutely nothing halfway. Since 1999, when the band was formed by childhood friends Christ, the Reverend, singer M. Shadows, and guitarists Synyster Gates and Zacky Vengeance, “epic” has been the operative description of both their anthemic music and their propensity for rowdy behavior. A7X, as the name is commonly abbreviated, were once nearly booted from a tour—band accounts differ as to whether it was the Plea for Peace or Take Action Tour—when Christ drunkenly emptied a bucket of warm urine onto the heads of the tour’s entire production crew. And just last fall, while the band was touring England, the Reverend won a night in what the Misfits’ Glenn Danzig once poetically described as a London Dungeon, thanks to his especially enthusiastic participation in a full-on pub brawl.
“We got a lot of publicity out of it,” says Vengeance of the drummer’s time in the clink, “but to us it wasn’t that big of a deal. The big deal was the mayhem that was going on back in the hotel the next day, while the Rev was in jail!” More violence, then? “No, definitely the opposite of violence,” the guitarist says with a laugh. “It was good times all around, but I think we’ll have to save the details for when we write our own book.”