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| Finding Sanctuary In A Dust Bowl |
| Warped Tour Hits Randall's Island, NYC |
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Avenged Sevenfold
Avenged Sevenfold
City Of Evil
Stream Music
 Avenged Sevenfold frontman M. Shadows stopped to answer a few quick questions.
Shoutweb: What was the thought process behind the making of the new record?
M. Shadows: The thought process overall was just to go and do it and not to have any expectations. Just to write what we felt like writing. Not to make our record sound like the last record or try to keep existing fans. Just to go with what we wanted. So it was really like write, record it, and go with it.
Shoutweb: On stage you mentioned that Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas was an inspiration for the song "Bat Country." Have movies impacted your work a lot in the past?
M. Shadows: Not really. I mean I love movies, but it is really a Hunter S. Thompson influence than really just because of the movie. It’s just because of what he has done.
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Shoutweb: You guys are no strangers to Warped Tour. Has it just become a given for you now to jump on every summer?
M. Shadows: This is our fourth Warped Tour. From day one we were on one of the small stages and when they asked us to be one of the headliners, of course we wanted to do it because it’s what we always dreamed of doing.
Shoutweb: You shouted out The Transplants on stage today. Is there a big camaraderie there between the bands?
M. Shadows: Yeah, we are good friends with them. Tim is a great guy. I love Rancid. Met him a couple of years ago, and he loves our band, so we are good friends with them.
Shoutweb: You guys are like Iron Maiden meets AFI.
M. Shadows: Oh yeah, AFI are good guys, and Maiden obviously are a huge influence, so thank you.
Shoutweb: What's next for you guys after this?
M. Shadows: Headlining tour in Europe.
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Funeral For A Friend
Funeral For A Friend
Hours
Stream Music
Guitarist Darran Smith, singer Matt Davies, bassist Gareth Davies, guitarist Kris Coombs and drummer Ryan Richards comprise Funeral For A Friend. The Brits pulled a doubleheader on August 13th by playing Warped Tour at Randall's Island in New York City and later that evening tearing up the revered CBGB's stage. However, in the mist of such an eventful day, three of the members spoke to Shoutweb about Hours, their follow-up to the wildly decadent Casually Dressed & In Deep Conversation, and what the five-piece face as an original musical entity.
Shoutweb: The new record is a little heavier sounding, a little more structured too, would you agree?
Darran Smith: Musically, I would say so, vocally…
Matt Davies: Deeper, definitely deeper.
Darran Smith: Melodic.
Matt Davies: I think people can classify it as definitely being a lot heavier than the last record purely because of those factors. Sonically I think the sound is a bit more aggressive, there is a bit more of a bite to it you know. Not necessarily because there are any aggressive vocals on there.
Darran Smith: I mean we all felt after finishing the last record that there was definitely something missing on there. I bit of an edge to it, maybe to the guitars or to the sound of it in general. We definitely captured that a bit more on this record, that crunch like Matt says that edge to it.
Darran Smith: We did want to achieve a more rawer sound and a more natural sound.
Matt Davies: We didn’t want to have a record that didn’t sound like how we perform when we are out on tour. So we kind of decided to go away and go with a producer that would that kind of sound across on record.
Kris Coombs: No click tracks, and all live drums.
Darran Smith: The whole thing with this record is that it captured the sprit of the band. Terry[Date, producer] really got the best performances out of us, and it really wasn't painstaking either. It was enjoyable to record. Where like there was times on the last record when we all felt like it got a bit too clinical, a little bit under the microscope. Just over analyzed. It was nice doing this one, so it helped the energy of the songs I think.
Shoutweb: Just before doing this record, you guys were on the Projekt Revolution tour, how did that go over? Was it too eclectic of a billing?
Matt Davies: It was very difficult. I think the organization of the tour wasn't really beneficial to the bands on the smaller stages really.
Darran Smith: It was still definitely a cool learning experience for us, definitely. We learned a lot on that tour, especially these traveling circus style tours that they have in the States that we haven't done before. You have to work pretty hard to get that audience in fort of you on those tours, so it was a cool learning experience and it was fun.
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Shoutweb: In comparison, how is Warped tour going for you then?
Matt Davies: It's going really, really well. We have had one or two kind of odd shows, but in general, I think the entire thing has been going good. We made a lot of cool friends, the whole vibe of the thing is very, very bizarre, but I think we took to it quite easily. I think it’s something you have to grin and bare really, it’s a hard tour, it’s tough on you. Juts in general, you got reside yourself to the fact that you might not get a shower everyday. It’s just a very hands-on kind of tour.
Darran Smith: It's also a very fair tour. The fact that all the bands rotate on all the stages everyday, it means that if you a smaller bands that less people know, the bigger bands rotate and they could be on first, so it means that people that bought tickets they have to be here when doors open or they might miss the band they came to watch. The cool thing about that is that it gives small bands the opportunity to get an audience. So every band get half hour slots, every band just gets a case of water or a case of beer everyday, there is no hierarchy. There is no big band getting preference over the smaller ones.
Shoutweb: Do you appreciate that even more since you guys kind of blew up over night in your homeland? You must find it to be a grounding experience.
Matt Davies: I think everything that we have done in the States has helped us to be grounded so far. The tours that we have done, the reception that we have had to the records so far, I don't think we have kind of blown up incredibly over here. In the UK definitely, but I think the pace of everything over here has been kind of nice, really. It has been easier to deal with on certain levels.
Shoutweb: In the UK, is it at the level where you guys can’t leave your homes without a bus load of fans hovering over your every step?
Matt Davies: I would say on the tour bus when you are on tour that's when it gets a bit extreme.
Darran Smith: The last UK tour we did, which was just before this Warped tour it definitely fan-wise, it did get a bit more full-on. Like Matt said when you'd arrive in the tour bus in the morning before the show, you would be surrounded by twenty-foot-deep crowd of kids waiting stuff signed or whatever. So that got a bit more intense the fans aspect in the UK, but I think in the US, we are still working hard, and still trying to build it up slowly. It’s such a huge country, and it takes so much longer to get around it and play to people for them to hear your music. So it's so much longer, so we understand that, and we are working harder just sort of doing that I think.
Shoutweb: What are you doing after this?
Darran Smith: We go back to the UK after this, and we play Redding and Leads. We play some headline stuff in Germany, and a couple of other European countries. Then we come back over and do a headline tour in Canada. That will be our first headlining tour that, that will be like a weeklong. After the Canadian tour, we join up with Story Of The Year for their headlining tour, we are direct support on that.
Shoutweb: When did you write this record?
Kris Coombs: We got like three weeks off around Christmas time, and none of us had seen our families at that point for almost a year, we had seen them for a couple of days here and there, but spent no lengthy period of time, it was kind of weird… We wrote this record on tour, didn't we?
Darran Smith: I think we tried to keep the flow going with it, and not have too much down time between the albums. I think partly the reason why it seem like it came out so soon in the States was because the first album was released a year before in the UK before it came out in the States, you know. So I think that's why it seemed like we followed it up so quickly when in actual fact it was a extra year gap between the first album and the second record. So I think we had a lot of ideas when we came off doing the tour that we had done up until then, and then it seemed to come together quite quickly in the studio.
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Shoutweb: What are some of the obstacles you face as a band? There is a lot of competition out there, that can get a bit intense at times or do the challenges in writing and recording exceed things like that.
Matt Davies: I guess that we just stay true to ourselves, and not try to get into the mindset that we have to cater to anybody else but ourselves, really. I mean, I had a few problems with vocals in the start of the session, but that was overcome pretty quickly.
Shoutweb: Did you go to a couch or was it something that Terry did to help?
Matt Davies: No, it was just that I couldn’t settle myself. I just couldn’t think that anything I was doing was any good. It was very hard for me to see anything as being any good, but Terry kind of helped me deal with that a lot.
Shoutweb: Why do you think that you felt that way, do you think it was because you felt like you had to live up the reputation you garnished from the last record?
Matt Davies: No, it was just that in my own head, I didn't think that I was gaining any progress. It took me a while to actually see that I was, I came out a different to what I was on Casually Dressed [& In Deep Conversation] to what I was on Hours, so. It took me a while to kind of figure that out, and Terry was very instrumental in helping me out in that.
Darran Smith: I think as a band, we definitely don’t pay too much attention to what everybody else is doing, we just do our thing and write our songs the way we want them to be written. It doesn't matter what everybody else is doing or what kind of formulas other bands are using, we kind of ignore that, and our songs come out sounding the way we want them to. We don't try to make them go in any particular direction or make them go a particular, we write them, and they end up sounding the way they do when we were finished writing it.
Shoutweb: What new songs have really gotten the Warp tour crowds going?
Matt Davies: There is a track off of the new record called, "Roses For The Dead" which seems to be going over really well. We started playing that actually during the Projekt Revolution tour, and it went down well pretty much from that point. So it has been a standard track at least for me personally at least in the set when it comes to playing it.
Darran Smith: It does take a while with the new songs on the record to feel out what works best with the crowd, and what goes over best live, and you don’t know that until you start playing them all out.
Kris Coombs: I think it just comes down then to the familiarly with the record with the audience. It will come in time which ones work best on their own, naturally.
Shoutweb: ON the other hand, bands will sometimes tell you that the crowds are already singing the songs before the record even comes out…it was leaked on the internet of course, so did you take any precautions to prevent that?
Darran Smith: There is a very funny story about that. We kept the record completely under wraps, and then about ten days before [laughing] it’s funny now…
Kris Coombs: Back then it wasn't.
Darran Smith: Matt accidentally put it onto the net.
Kris Coombs: Everything, the whole album, B-sides.
Darran Smith: It could have been worse, it would have been a month or two months before. Matt was absolutely gutted, he couldn’t believe it happened. Total accident, and it was just like one of those things where at first we were like, "Shit!" Then we thought about it….
Kris Coombs: "Hey, fan site, I am the lead singer, here's the new album!" Laughing.
Darran Smith: Matt was gutted, but afterwards, we were like, "No big deal, really." It would be on there in a week's time anyway. We can pretend that we did it on purpose as a gift to those people who really want to find it.
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