Avenged Sevenfold: 'It's truly an exciting time for rock and metal bands'
Zacky Vengeance on why he's optimistic for the scene
Last updated 12th Jun 2018
Avenged Sevenfold guitarist Zacky Vengeance has insisted it’s ‘truly an exciting time for rock and metal bands.’
Speaking to Kerrang! Radio ahead of their epic Main Stage performance, Sophie K asked Zacky about the turbulent times rock music is in with some bands opting to go mainstream to get noticed and others going the other way.
“Oh man, we just put out our last album (‘The Stage’) as a surprise release with a nine-and-a-half minute single (‘The Stage’), so we’ve kind of proven that we’re staying as far away from that as possible,” Zacky said.
“Make music that you love, make it as exciting as you can as best as you can, do the art the way that you want to do it – release it directly to your fans, give it away for free, charge a million dollars for it.
“Do whatever you want to do but don’t worry about being mainstream because we’re at such an exciting time in music with streaming… we could come up with a song today and release it directly to our fans and as long as our fans embrace technology and aren’t totally gutted over the fact there’s not a physical release. Just mix it up, just do things differently.”
Zacky continued: “I think it’s truly a really exciting time for rock and metal bands provided they get out of the old headspace of feeling like you have to take three years, four years to record an album and then you have to tour for a cycle and hit markets and all that BS.
“I think make music because you love to do it, make art because you love to do it release it however you want to do it, play as loud as you want, play until they kick you off the stage and just have fun doing it. And if it works then it’s destined to work and if it doesn’t then have f---king fun doing it.”
You can watch Sophie K’s wide-ranging chat with Zacky right here: