When we were writing the 'Stage' album, we realized we'd never really done proper covers, where we were taking songs and making them our own and kind of playing around with them. I came up with the idea of doing a cover of 'Wish You Were Here,' but we didn't really want it on the record.

Every once in a while, we can touch somebody's life in a way just by writing a melody or writing some music, which is always really special.

It's important to know the ins and outs of the music business, but you can also dive too deeply into it and forget that you're really here to make music.

Music and space collide for me, as I find them incredibly stimulating.

When you look at metal, it's probably one of the healthiest genres when you look at it in a worldwide perspective - every single country listens to metal.

I was a fan of 'Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare 2,' and I got into 'Call Of Duty: Black Ops,' which was my favorite 'Call Of Duty' game of all time.

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.