Avenged Sevenfold bassist Johnny Christ is aware that they have a complicated relationship with their listeners: They either love or hate them.
In a new interview with 99.7 The Blitz, Christ talked about the upcoming third leg of the band’s “Life Is But A Dream…” North American tour. During the chat, he was questioned about the experience of having an enthusiastic fanbase. After highlighting that it’s ‘amazing’ to get recognized and have a chat with the fans, he also clarified being aware of the haters of the band. He said:
“I think the one thing about this band is that it is, or has been rather, polarizing — you either love or hate us, and those that love us have been infatuated with us for a long time, and I think that’s kind of a great thing that we have going for us with our fanbase, to be honest. We’re super excited to have gotten back out last year with them after a long hiatus, and now being back and taking it into 2024 and keeping this cycle going, it’s just exciting to have those fans for us.”
Haters Never Bothered Avenged Sevenfold
In addition to their fanbase that helped the band to win the ‘Most Dedicated Fans’ award at the 2012 Revolver Golden Gods Awards, Avenged Sevenfold also has haters. But apparently, having haters never bothered the members.
In an interview in 2017, the guitarist Zacky Vengeance clarified that the band was never bothered by the haters since they had been getting them since the beginning of their career. In fact, in Vengeance’s words, you are doing things right if you have haters:
“To be honest, none of it has ever bothered me. We’ve been getting it since day one. 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. Right then and there, I was so happy and thrilled because if people hate what you’re doing, it means you’re doing it right.”
In an earlier interview in 2013, the frontman, M. Shadows, also reflected on the hate, especially in America, stating that mainstream America does not care about rock and metal music. He added that no other band was doing what his band has been doing and further explained why:
“No other metal band is doing what we’re doing. We’ve all heard people in bands who I won’t give any publicity to shouting their mouths off in recent months, but fuck the haters. People know that they’ll get more attention by talking shit about us and if that’s the way they want to run their bands, that’s fine, but it’s not what we would do. We go out there and kill it every night and you can see what this means to people.”
You can hear the interview below.
