When we talked to Avenged Sevenfold's M. Shadows in 2018 about the songs that made him who he is today, the singer cited among 10 hugely influential cuts "Linoleum" by L.A. punks NOFX. "It was like Queen doing speed punk, and it totally blew our minds!" he told us of listening to the Punk in Drublic opener with A7X's late drummer Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan back in the day. Shadows has further consecrated his love for the song by collaborating with NOFX on the new track "Linewleum" and appearing alongside his Avenged bandmates in the fun music video. "Linewleum" is off NOFX's just-announced 14th LP, Single Album. Watch and listen above.
"'I have no idea why 'Linoleum' is THE NOFX song that is covered by so many bands, while other NOFX songs get hardly any attention," NOFX's Fat Mike commented. "'Linoleum' wasn't a single; it had no video; it got no radio play, and most importantly, it didn't even have a chorus!!! All popular songs have choruses! WTF! So, one night I stayed up till 4:00 am checking out all the different versions on YouTube. Watching hundreds of bands from over 28 countries (mostly Indonesia) doing 'Linoleum' was a humbling experience for me. So I decided to write a song that was a shout-out to all those people that learned those four chords and remembered the non-rhyming lyrics. Then I asked the biggest of all the bands (Avenged Sevenfold) to play some leads on the song. Then M Shadows suggested we do a video together. Then I figured I should put all of the bands in the video. Well, I couldn't fit all the bands, but I picked a bunch of cool ones! A song about not playing a song that's not a hit song with a video about other bands covering the song! This is why I love punk rock and writing punk songs. Rules out the door!'"
