After taking a short hiatus from their Breakdown Episode series, Avenged Sevenfold are back with another insightful clip that sheds light on their creative process. For their latest video, guitarist Synyster Gates and drummer Brooks Wackerman dig into the band's 2005 track "Beast and the Harlot" taken from the album City of Evil.
Gates notes early on in the clip that the song began with him writing the intro on piano, which the band decided they would flesh out then "stick it somewhere." The two briefly joke about whether Wackerman has even heard the album (he officialy joined the band in 2015), then the shredder recognizes the insane drums laid down by the group's late member Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan, before focusing on singer M. Shadows' impressive screams.
Continuing to rifle through the numerous parts and tracks laid down for the song, Gates notes there are at least four different guitar leads present on the fast-paced, epic track. While listening to recording sessions, Wackerman pipes up, "Was that a tuba?" "That's the tuba," confirms Gates.
Later on in the video, the guitarist specifically pulls out one extremely complex part where he admits the recording is "punched in" and notes he "learned to play this live ... but I couldn't even kind of do this little thing," and air guitars along to a whip-fast part that seems nearly impossible for even the most expert players to pull off. Both musicians discuss how age and experience have taught them to stop writing and incorporating bits they can't pull off in a concert setting, with the percussionist emphasizing "That voice is always kind of singing in my head. It's going: Maybe don't go there."
