I don’t really play a lot of slide in general, but it was fun getting into that style and exploring it.
Synyster Gates
Bullet for My Valentine, we’re bros. We’ve been in the trenches with those guys.
Synyster Gates
It’s really fun to just get on a bike and just go and, I guess in a way, to be able to leave the tour and not be confined and all that kind of stuff.
Synyster Gates
I was living out of my truck for a short while. My dad wanted to emancipate me at 16 and send me to music college.
Synyster Gates
I don’t like being locked in a cage on the creative scale. I need an outlet.
Synyster Gates
It’s very important to focus on the music first. That’s always number one. But after that, it’s extremely important to just have fun with what you’re doing.
Synyster Gates
We’re happier when we’re with friends on tour.
Synyster Gates
I find that drummers are the coolest people in the world. I play a little bit of drums.
Synyster Gates
Lyrically, ‘Planets’ is the precursor to ‘Acid Rain’; it’s about a meteoric, intergalactic war that results in an apocalypse and the human species aligning together to go fight something much better than us, our individual trials and tribulations.
Synyster Gates
Some people will basically just shred all over everything, even a ballad. I’m glad I wasn’t born with that genetic chip – the need to just wheedle-whee all over the place.
Synyster Gates
For the first two weeks after he passed, we were done as a band. We were just done. And because of the fans and Jimmy’s parents and relatives and stuff like that, they just demanded that we continue on and spread the legacy that is, you know, the crazy James ‘The Rev’ Sullivan.
Synyster Gates
We’re fans of stuff like Maiden, but I think we generally get it from weirder places. For me, the Eagles’ ‘Hotel California’ represents one of the most brilliant harmony approaches to music. Boston did it very well, too.
Synyster Gates
My favorite punk rock song is ‘Linoleum’ by NOFX. That’s pure harmony, the coolest chord changes.
Synyster Gates
We really wanted to circumvent that online learning curve, where it’s virtually impossible to use words to explain music.
Synyster Gates
In a studio situation, I’m able to dig deep and come up with stuff that all the guys think fits the vibe of the song. And I think that’s partly due to the fact that I grew up listening to just about everything under the sun. I’m very open to music, and I like to do things in a traditional and musical way.
Synyster Gates
We’re trying to leave no stone unturned, to push forward in every aspect of what it means to be a band. Because this really matters to us. Metal matters to us. And we know exactly how much it means to kids out there, too.
Synyster Gates
My father was a studio musician, played for a lot of people like Frank Zappa and a lot of R&B bands, and was always gone doing that. Then when he was home, he was practicing. And so I always saw it, and I always wanted to do what he did.
Synyster Gates
Everything from the lyrics to the production, solos to the writing – it’s all democratic. At the end of the day, you know, when you’re all done with the grind – which it is always an incredible grind for us to write records – I think it makes it that much more special to hear the final product.
Synyster Gates
As you get a little older and start drinking a bit more coffee, you start talking about big-boy things a little more.
Synyster Gates
When practicing, it’s great to break a part down into its different elements, start slowly, and then try to build up the speed until you’re playing as fast as you possibly can.
Synyster Gates
My little brother played drums, so we had a drum set over at my house.
Synyster Gates
I think, back when I was younger, I was a lot more confident about certain things that I would write, and I didn’t need the band’s blessing or agreement; I would just kind of fight for it ’cause I knew it was good. And then the problem with getting older, especially when there’s some success involved, you have a different measuring stick.
Synyster Gates
We wanted to do something really, really different, something next level, and use new technology and things.
Synyster Gates
If you want to do things right, you have to dig deep for that inspiration.
Synyster Gates
We listen to a lot of hip hop. They’re the ones that are trailblazing. It used to be rock, but it’s really turned to hip hop, and they’re doing really unique and cool things, and we wanted to do that, too.
Synyster Gates
We have to do everything a hundred and ten percent when we’re doing it. If we’re on tour, we’re constantly thinking of different ways to make the show better, or whatever it is.
Synyster Gates
Our singer, Matt, was reading Stephen Hawking and other physics-related books, and I was reading entrepreneurial books, and we all started discussing the new technologies that were taking over the world, from 3-D printing to space travel. These conversations starting leading us to think of how we could portray these things in a musical way.
Synyster Gates
Rolling Stones came later for me. I was a Beatles guy. All of us were pretty much more along the lines of Beatles guys than we were Stones or Elvis.
Synyster Gates
Korn is great friends of ours, so to be on tour with friends is usually our number one. We’ve been very blessed to meet a lot of great bands, successful bands, that we can go tour with.
Synyster Gates
Just based on the primary adage of the necessity breeding innovation, it was just like ‘Well, what makes me the guitar player that I am?’ and I feel like I listen to so much different music, and I’m a student of so many genres of music, and I feel like it’s fun to apply those things and anything super applicable to any type of music.
Synyster Gates
I am a product of an amalgamation of different teachers. If it was just one teacher, even just my father, I would be half the player that I am today.
Synyster Gates
The thing about me is that I’m very fortunate to have had the opportunities with Avenged Sevenfold in songwriting. I really think it’s helped to bolster my guitar playing as well.
Synyster Gates
I try to, at least, think very melodically, and my band forces me to think very melodically.
Synyster Gates
We kinda were a radio-rock band. We were still pretty technical, but I think the prog people hated us because we didn’t do a bunch of weird time signatures… which are cool at times, but I’m more interested in progressive harmony.
Synyster Gates
We’re more about other things over odd timings: orchestration, composition, horn/vocal arrangements – that’s where we get super weird.
Synyster Gates
I’m not a big-effects sort of guy – I like to keep it simple.
Synyster Gates
We interact with the crowd, turn it into a party.
Synyster Gates
We listen to a lot of classical and a lot of jazz, and so you get some funky notes here and there. And we get a little experimental in some of the deeper tracks.
Synyster Gates
We have a lot of fun. There are no holds barred when it comes to writing music for us.
Synyster Gates
We’re not gonna write a fusion song for Avenged Sevenfold, obviously, but I love having those elements and blending it in, and having the eclectic arrangements and stuff like that.
Synyster Gates
I wouldn’t be one-third of the player I am today if it wasn’t for Avenged. They’re an inspiring group of guys, and I’m constantly challenged to write things beyond my ability and then figure out how to play them.
Synyster Gates
We don’t ever spread ourselves too thin. And sometimes it’s a little bit to the chagrin of our fans; they don’t get albums… I mean, The Beatles were doing two albums a year at one point.
Synyster Gates
I don’t feel like we have that Paul McCartney gene, and I think the cool thing about us is that we know it.
Synyster Gates
Sometimes, with more progressive songs, you lose that feel somewhere along the line, but ‘This Means War’ never quits – the energy is always there.
Synyster Gates
All of my solos were improvised initially – I would go in and get my bearings and see what I came up with.
Synyster Gates
I think if you go to ‘Strength of the World,’ a song like that, the chorus isn’t that great, but you go into the bridge and other things and the catchier parts and the better melodies we were really focused on.
Synyster Gates
I’m obsessed with great endings and crazy intros and stuff like that. I think we all are from what we’ve listened to and stuff, so I’ve always focused on great bridge melodies that just kind of naturally fit, or like a crazy ending at the end of ‘Seize the Day,’ something like that.
Synyster Gates
Lyrically, ‘Nightmare’ is an absolute masterpiece to me.
Synyster Gates
If I’m proud of one thing in my playing, it’s being able to slow it down and focus on the melody.
Synyster Gates
We spend a lot of time with MIDI keyboards and various processors, and we just figure it out. And all those things you hear in our songs work as submelodies and countermelodies, and everything has to fit.
Synyster Gates
When we try and blend the two together, the songwriting and the touring like we did before, it doesn’t really work. We tend to become very focused on what we are doing. And we tend to be a little bit one-track-minded.
Synyster Gates
We’re very much perfectionists, so when we’re putting on a huge show and want to play to the best of ability, we rehearse intensely. And I have a guitar pretty much in my hand for at least five hours before doing a show. I’m just noodling and mucking around and working on some of the songs here and there.
Synyster Gates