Avenged Sevenfold hail Metallica as ‘inspirational’ and ‘great tutors’
Avenged Sevenfold have hailed Metallica as “inspirational” and “great tutors” after touring North America with them last summer.
Bassist Johnny Christ spoke to Planet Rock’s Paul Anthony ahead of their Friday night headline slot at Download Festival and explained that touring with Metallica on their North American stadium tour was nothing short of an inspiration.
“The first time we got to play with Metallica in the States, we did a stadium show to open up the new American football stadium for Minnesota Vikings (the US Bank Stadium in August 2016),” Johnny said
“The show did really well, it was the same line-up (Metallica, Avenged Sevenfold and Volbeat), I think Lars or one of the (Metallica) guys reached out to us and said ‘hey the show did really well, let’s see if we should take this for a summer run next summer’ and obviously we were like ‘yeah cool’. We thought about it for two seconds and said ‘let’s go’.
“It ended up being a blast, those guys have become great friends and great tutors in the world and everything like that and (it’s) just inspirational to see those guys after so long still enjoying themselves, still getting out there and kicking ass every night and really putting everything they have into it. It’s a great model to follow after.”
Johnny also said that Avenged Sevenfold’s ascent to Download Festival headliners was partially down to winning over fans who might necessarily know who they are.
“(We played) Warped Tours when we weren’t necessarily a Warped Tour band; it’s a punk rock tour that goes around the states and we were a hardcore band at the time and we were the different band on the tour and we figured this is the way to expose other people to our music.
“From day one that’s kind of how we’ve organically grown – we want to get out in front of new people may they be naysayers or people who don’t really know (us) and let our music and our performance and shows speak for itself."
Watch the full interview below where Johnny also talks about why they decided to cover Pink Floyd on The Rolling Stones on the expanded edition of The Stage and also the possibility of new Avenged Sevenfold material being on the horizon.
PHOTO GALLERY: Friday at Download Festival 2018
PHOTO GALLERY: Saturday at Download Festival 2018