QUOTES

I think everyone in the band has had someone that's served in their family. I wouldn't say that anybody has a military family, but both of my grandfathers were in the military.

We do a lot of things that kind of annoy people and our fan base. We try not to get overloaded on it. For us, that means we don't do social media stuff - we have an Avenged Sevenfold social media, but none of the band members have Facebooks or any sort of Twitter.

Games helped me a lot when The Rev died. It was something I able to go do and stay in the house and not have to be outside and deal with people. But I also found a community online that I was able to escape the feeling I was having of losing a best friend.

I want to stay away from trends and do what we want to do musically.

We grew up with every type of band from Primus to Mr. Bungle to Elton John to pop music to metal, and we try to throw it all in a blender. And whatever comes out of that is more Avenged Sevenfold than metal or metalcore.

I got an email saying we were nominated for a Grammy, and I instantly thought it was a joke. So I started Googling the nominees, and there we were!

Everyone has an opinion, and everyone should be entitled to say whatever they want.

I'm kind of a geek when it comes to talking about chord structures or melody, so I always loved in-depth conversations with musicians about things. I also enjoy when a fan can just put something on, and they really know nothing about music other than they like it and it touches them in some way.

The 'Black Album' was my real first introduction to Metallica. I was, like, 12 or 13 at the time. We were just getting into music, and I liked that album a lot, but it didn't necessarily change my life. But when I started picking up all the other Metallica records, 'Master of Puppets' was the one to me that stuck out with its songwriting.

Those who are not very good at understanding mental health issues are not going to know what other people are going through in depression. You have to kind of put yourself in somebody else's shoes.

I know that sometimes we, as Americans, we reach outside of our means, and every once in a while we like to 'police the world,' but I think we do a lot of good as well.

The song 'Paradigm' talks about nanobots - and how they can potentially be used to cure diseases and help you live forever. But how much of a human being would you be at that point? If you're 70 percent machine and 30 percent human, are you going to lose yourself?

When we were growing up, we listened to all sorts of music, but the first band that really grabbed all of us live was AFI.

We have this yearning to know the answers to the big questions about space and why we're here; we can't evolve fast enough to figure these answers out on our own, but we can do it through artificial intelligence. But there's also some very scary downsides that could come if we don't put the right safety precautions in there.

We're trying to change the whole way our merch is viewed, in terms of just not a bunch of skulls interlaced; you know, every album can look the same, so they're going to be stylized and different.

We're really excited to be even talked about in the same breath as Foo Fighters or Metallica.

I listen to a lot of Pink Floyd, the Doors, Elton John, Sabbath, Metallica, GN'R, Megadeth - just classic rock, classic metal stuff.

Our band has always been really big on imagery. We've kind of used that as one of our strengths; we tend to do that pretty well.

We are ever evolving and never repeat ourselves.

No. 1 records are fine, but in 2016, they just don't mean as much any more - the currency has changed.

I've said the Grammys messed up metal because it's not on TV. What I'm saying is when you're in a metal category, it's not televised, and it doesn't move the needle forward for metal artists, and I wish they had more respect for the genre.

I went to this vocal coach, Ron Anderson, who has worked with Axl Rose and Chris Cornell, to train my voice and learn a whole new way of singing.

I recall us selling out L.A.'s 5,000-capacity Gibson Amphitheatre and flying straight to Germany to play a 300-capacity room where we'd only sold 120 tickets. This was when 'City Of Evil' was really taking off in the U.S., but it seemed like Europe was less interested.

Ever since 'Hail to the King,' we've been more cognizant of our chord progressions, our key changes, drama in songs, a lot of dynamics - we've really added a lot of that in there.

We go out there and kill it every night, and you can see what this means to people.

The reality is you either step into the future, or you become a dinosaur.

When I do a workshop, there is always at least one author who comes up afterward and asks if I'll take a look at his or her book and consider blurbing it. For some reason, I can turn someone down in e-mail, but when he or she is looking me in the eye, I cave.

I've always been fascinated by how the past impacts the present. For the first half of my career as a novelist, I wrote psychological suspense mysteries. I wanted to be a therapist but was told that while I was a fine diagnostician, I would be a terrible therapist because I wanted to solve everyone's problems.

I work on one book at a time. And yes, I am immersed. Six days a week for four to six hours a day. In between books, I stop writing for as much as two to three months, but during that time, I do research and think, plot and plan the book.

'Power Play' is a morality tale for our post-Enron world and - not incidentally - wildly entertaining. Nothing wrong with that.