A great way to get your rhythm playing together is to work with a drummer, preferably someone that has a good groove and plays solidly in time.
The first review our band ever got - when I was 17 years old and we had just released our first EP, and this tiny little magazine wrote a review on it, and for that month, we were the best album of the month, and we were also the worst album of the month. We won best and worst album of the month in the same magazine.
We really wanted to create an album that had no boundary or limit to it. There's nothing to say that we couldn't release a song that belongs on 'The Stage' 20 years into our career. We want it to be an album that constantly grows with what we want to do, and that's what we did.
One of our biggest pet peeves is listening to bands that use harmony guitars for the sake of it. If you can't figure out how do something different than Maiden, UFO, or even Boston, then what's the point?
I like being able to do dueling leads, and it's fun to be able to shred.
We have been harnessing every aspect of what makes Avenged truly unrelenting and building off of that.