Originally Posted by Reaper16
Oh, that's right! Well, let me put it like this:
1. Nightmare
In 2010, Avenged Sevenfold released their fifth studio album. It is awful. So awful that I had a nightmare in which I was forced to listen to it a second time. The album is titled Nightmare. On the surface, it is curious as to why a band in their position would want to make an album titled Nightmare. Their previous three albums had gone Gold, Platinum, and Gold – no mean feat for any band in this age of rampant digital piracy, let alone a heavy metal band. The band members are each under 30 years old. They have toured the world many times over. Nightmare debuted at #1 on the Billboard album sales chart, usurping Eminem’s five-week reign on the top. Frankly, Avenged Sevenfold are successful in ways that most people wouldn’t dare to dream about. What in the world could give these guys nightmares?
2. Welcome to the Family
These guys’ nightmares began three days after all of the songs for Nightmare were written. The band’s drummer – stage name The Rev – was found dead in his hotel room. The autopsy found that The Rev died from a fatal combination of OxyContin, Opana, Valium, nordiazepam tablets, and, of course, alcohol. The Rev is given a songwriting credit for every track on Nightmare, and he wrote lyrics for the song “Fiction.” His loss surely makes the album’s success bittersweet. The band has finally earned its darkness, perhaps. They might now have nightmares like those of us without multi-platinum success have nightmares. Prior to The Rev’s overdose the band had only two reasons to have a nightmare, as far as I can see. The second nightmare was when the band’s lead vocalist – stage name M. Shadows – ruined his vocal cords because of his use of untrained harsh vocals. He had to learn how to sing because he lost the ability to scream. The band adjusted and became far more successful than before. The first nightmare was the one that I caused.
3. Danger Line
I caused, together with my friend Erik, what has to be the most awkward moment in the history of Avenged Sevenfold’s career. I have no doubts that it was the most awkward moment in Kansas City that night. It was likely the most awkward moment anywhere on the day of November 8th, 2002, and that was the day that the United Nations awkwardly voted to send weapons inspectors back into Iraq because they didn’t feel the first weapons inspectors did a good-enough job because those people didn’t find anything.
4. Buried Alive
Some people didn’t find anything wrong with Avenged Sevenfold’s performance that night. Some people rather enjoyed the band’s chunky guitar tone. Some people thought that the nasal quality to the screamed, hardcore punk vocal style evoked a raw sense of passion. Erik and I were not some people. This band was killing us. We gave each other disturbed looks, looks that said “Can you believe how ****ing shitty this band is?” Erik leaned into my ear and said “Can you believe how ****ing shitty this band is?”
5. Natural Born Killer
We could not believe how ****ing shitty that band was. We were not there to see Avenged Sevenfold. We were there to see High on Fire, a power trio that plays a weed-and-booze-fueled mix of drone and doom metal. High on Fire were opening for Shadows Fall, an energetic metalcore band with dual-lead guitars and plenty of long solos. Shadows Fall were opening for Mushroomhead, a group of eight masked, jumpsuited musicians - often accused of being derivative of the more popular Slipknot - whose brand of hard rock had diverse influences, including heavy metal, techno and dubstep. Avenged Sevenfold, then a pseudo-Christian (the band’s name references Genesis 4:24) metalcore outfit, were placed on the tour at the behest of their record label. Most of the band members were under 20 years old at the time.
6. So Far Away
Erik and I were under 20 years old at the time. Erik and I might have been 15 years old at the time. Our hands were marked with an X inked in fat-tipped black Sharpie. Erik’s mom was with us, standing up against the wall, eyes sort of on us, us who were in the middle of the floor. Kansas City crowds love to mosh. It is not a respectable quality but it is true. It is true, too, that no one was moshing to Avenged Sevenfold. That is not a good sign. We loudly BOOOOOOO’d the band after the first song was over. The second song was worse than the first song. The second song confirmed to us how ****ing shitty this band was. We BOOOOOOOO’d some more. Other people joined in on the heckling.
7. God Hates Us
The heckling was soon taken to a level of severity that went from honest disappointment to outright spite. This was all the fault of Erik and I, who yelled out, in turns, “You ****ing suck!” and “**** you!” right before Avenged Sevenfold started up their third song. Their third song was the worst of the lot: screechy and sloppily-played and unenjoyable in every aspect. As soon as it ended we yelled with mighty strength: “Get off the ****ing stage!” and “You guys are ****ing terrible!” Our jeers inspired the people around us to advance from BOOOOOOing to out-and-out cursing. We were the instigators. Erik’s mom did not come over to us and tell us to stop yelling at the band. Even though we were easily identifiable as the ones who started it.
8. Victim
I know that we were easily identifiable as the ones who started it because M. Shadows looked straight into my eyes. He stared at me, the riotmaker, as the BOOOOOs and ****s were raining down on him. We were close enough to the Beaumont Club’s stage to see the tears well up in and around the black eye shadow of M. Shadows. We were close enough to see the shifting and collapsing of his adam’s apple, the flush of rouge to his pale cheeks. M. Shadows looked at Erik and I and then back to his band, placing his thumb and index finger around his eyes. M. Shadows looked back at the whole crowd and then back to us. M. Shadows, the lead vocalist of Avenged Sevenfold, began crying.
9. Tonight the World Dies
Crying, onstage, saline streams running down his face, M. Shadows made a rhetorical plea to Erik and I, and by extension, the entire crowd. “We’re... we’re just up on this stage trying to perform for you guys, we’re giving it our all, and you guys are just… just” -- and this is all that I can remember with certainty, before the blubbering and whimpering and sobbing overtook the discernable English language words. Dude was crying and it was all thanks to Erik and I.
10. Fiction
Erik and I should have been nicer. We should never have started heckling. We ought to have suffered through their set, adopted a grin-and-bear-it attitude, tried to appreciate that Avenged Sevenfold were artists, tried to find the value in their work, tried to be better people. I am saying all of this with a straight face. Can you believe it? I believe nothing that I have said in this paragraph.
11. Save Me
In this paragraph things turn out OK for Avenged Sevenfold. M. Shadows gathered himself after a minute and a half of unrestrained crying. To his credit, he led the band through the rest of their set. To the crowd’s credit, we never stopped heckling. Now, Erik and I weren’t as fierce anymore. We were too busy laughing at what we caused. What was hatred mellowed into pity, into a sort of game. I’d like to think that we made Avenged Sevenfold better. Listen to the four albums that they have released since the night I made M. Shadows cry. The band is still, as I told them they were, ****ing terrible, but less so than before. The band adjusted and became far more successful than before. M. Shadows would never cry on stage now – the band is too popular, too self-assured, too successful to let some kid derail them like that. But I’d like to think that I helped make Avenged Sevenfold that way. I would like to think that when they play for the rare crowd that meets them with indifference or worse, that the band thinks about me. I would like to think that whenever M. Shadows’ vocal cords are sore, that he sees my face in the reflection of his cup of honey-lemon tea. I would like to think that as The Rev’s pharmacopeia-induced state of bliss turned into numbness, as the pallor of death overtook him, that he was seeing me with a scythe in my hand. I would like for Avenged Sevenfold to be artistically honest: that I was the inspiration for that album. I would like to think that the band is afraid of me, that I am what manifested in the nightmares that they had in 2010.
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