23 June 2005 Drum magazine
has talked with Jimmy:
New York City is wreaking its vengeance on Avenged Sevenfold — or at least their drummer. Somewhere in this vast city, an insanely creative metal rhythm master known as The Reverend is wandering, recovering from a wretchedly excessive night of hedonism on the tab of their big new record company, Warner Bros.
It must have been one hell of a party, you think to yourself as you wait with increasing impatience in Studio G at the famed New York City recording studio Soundtrack for The Reverend to appear. It’s now an hour past the original rendezvous time, and although the rest of his bandmates have made it in for their respective photo shoots and interviews, The Reverend is utterly AWOL.
Something obviously went down at the end of evening, because now — for reasons you will never know — not only was The Reverend thrown out of the band’s hotel, but apparently there wasn’t another one on the entire island of Manhattan that would accept him. As a result, this 23-year old Huntington Beach, Californian is, you have been told, trying to make his way from hastily procured digs somewhere in Brooklyn. He will definitely be here. Just hang out a little longer.
YOU ARE A BUSY PERSON and you are getting annoyed, but your time hasn’t been entirely wasted. In order to avoid leaks of Avenged Sevenfold’s new CD, City Of Evil, Warner Bros. has invited you and a few other journalists to listen to the tracks in the studio where they are being assembled by mixing genius Andy Wallace, and you have to admit these songs are fascinating. They are an intense synthesis of metal, progressive, and orchestral influences. They are insanely over the top, yet mathematically precise and logical. Some of them are nine minutes long, and each one has incredible drumming, with lighting fast moves, mind-blowing combos, and a few tasteful grooves.
This tardy Reverend does not suck, you decide, but you have 18 other things to get to today and the 60-plus minute delay has already brought your schedule to its knees. You’ll just have to line up a phoner, you tell the publicist as you pack up your laptop and head disgustedly for the door. You reach for the knob, but never touch it, because it has swung open as if by some dark magic and there in the entryway, at long last, stands The Reverend.
The Reverend does not look like the other members of Avenged Sevenfold, who, with their multiple piercings, tattoos, and ultra-ugly clothes look like they were designed to star in a video game about a metal band. Instead, The Reverend has a regular haircut and regular clothes, although there is a strong, brooding aura that surrounds his tall frame. He wants nothing more than to hide behind his dark bomber sunglasses. Unfortunately, his bassist grabs them off his face the second he enters the studio so he can wear them for his photo shoot.
EXPOSED, The Reverend has nowhere left to hide, and now he must talk to you in the bright light of Soundtrack’s big client lounge. He looks like he’d rather be back in bed, but he came all this way, and realizes that he as may as well answer your questions. You’re interested in how he started playing drums in the first place, so you ask how it happened.
The Reverend looks at you, tries to decide if you are just another in a long line of dolt music writers, summons up every last ounce of his strength, and speaks. “I was always messing around, banging on everything when I was younger,” he says slowly, attempting to remember. “I can play guitar and piano and sing, but drums just clicked for me always. I’m always listening to drums in music.”
You ask him who his drumming influences were early on, and you can feel him perk up ever so slightly. “When I started, I was into Dave Lombardo and Vinnie Paul, transcribing all their stuff,” he recalls. “A few years later I really got into Dave Weckl, Vinnie Colaiuta, and Virgil Donati. I love those drummers, because I’m always trying to figure out what they’re doing. I still love all the metal drummers, they taught me how to play.
“I was always playing metal. I was influenced by those drummers most because they tend to be a little bit experimental — the metal drummers are always flashier or more experimental than other drummers. I latched onto that. My style is really coming into my own in this band. I spend most of my time thinking about these songs and playing them live every day.”
Developing new approaches to drums is very serious business for The Reverend, and it’s something he delivers with a passion on City Of Evil. “You can do rhythmic stuff on drums that you can’t do on any other instrument. You can do stuff on your hands and feet that you can play faster than on any other instrument,” he points out. “I get my moments on this CD. There’s drum breaks and solo fills, and actually there’s a drum solo on the album. It’s so fun. I sit in my room on a practice kit and try to come up with stuff that’s way different. I’m not bragging or anything, but I can play 60 minutes super-fast. I always regret that I didn’t put more fast fills on the album, because my band always tells me, ’Stick with creative stuff. It hits you harder when you hear something that’s weird.’ It’s fun to come up with stuff you’ve never played before, just sitting and thinking about it really helps, writing it in your head, figuring out how to do a break.”
The Reverend tells you his forum with Avenged Sevenfold got started a few years ago at Huntington High School back in Huntington Beach, where the singer M. Shadows began putting the group together. “We’d always been in punk rock and weird experimental bands. We decided to start a metal band and get back to what we had been listening to in fifth grade. It just started out as friends trying to write some metal rock music, and we’re still practicing in the same garage. I think now we’ll go back and learn to play these new songs live, because we haven’t done that yet. We’ve been writing them for half a year.”
WHILE NOT EXACTLY JUMPING out of his seat, The Reverend appears to be making a comeback, and seems happy to talk about his band’s unique approach to songwriting. “It’s funny,” he muses, “on this album, we really didn’t think about sticking to any structure or genre. We were just putting all our ability and talent into it, and all our influences were coming out of us. When you first start writing an album, you don’t know what it will sound like. We started writing guitar riffs, and it became obvious this would be an album unlike anything we’d ever done.
“We knew we wouldn’t be screaming, so we tried to get creative with the vocal parts. There’s an eventual chorus somewhere in the song, whether it happens once, twice, or three times. We just write to entertain ourselves — if we get excited about something, we just go with it and hope that other people get excited about it too. We’ll write two songs that are mediocre that have some great parts, then scratch the songs and put the best parts into one. That’s happened a few times on this album.”
In fact, the writing process is where things are truly stimulating for Rev. Sevenfold. “For me, it’s about trying to write perfect drum parts, whether it’s a one-two or something really busy. You can make a simple beat really exciting by throwing a splash cymbal in a weird place. Our mix is so loud that you usually don’t hear any of my ghost notes on snare, but I tend to just throw splashes or bells in there.
“Cymbal work can make beats really interesting without stepping on anyone’s toes. It seems cool to me to play a splash [in the perfect place]. Just make it a part of the revolving beat. Everything repeats, and every beat has a little drum hook, something that’s a consistent pattern that would catch a drummer’s attention as a beat to transcribe.”
THERE WAS A GREAT DEAL of critical acclaim for Avenged Sevenfold’s first two indie releases — 2001’s Sounding The Seventh Trumpet and 2003’s Waking The Fallen — due to the band’s breathlessly crushing style overall and The Reverend’s hyper-fast capabilities in particular. For City Of Evil, he was extra-meticulous in planning his parts. “In the studio, we changed a couple of things — the band voted on cutting out a few moments of insanity where I’m only thinking about myself,” he admits. “But I made sure I had every moment on the album written out, which I’d never done before. It sucks approaching it that way, because you’re stopping the songs every 20 seconds because you didn’t play one note exactly the way you wanted to, but by the time I went into the studio, I had everything written out in my head.
“I thought about transcribing them, but when we were writing this album I had a broken hand for six weeks. I could barely play — I was holding a stick with two fingers. That was very stressful. I knew my hand was going to heal, but I didn’t know if I would make the deadline. My cast was off two weeks before we went into the studio. I had gotten into a fight in the bar: I knocked someone out for [bassist] Johny [Christ] and my girlfriend. Now I’ve sworn off fighting forever. That was very untimely and it sucks.”
YOU MAKE A MENTAL NOTE not to antagonize The Reverend, and you wonder if these aggressive tendencies might have had anything to do with his relocation last night. Then you ask him how he developed his trademark blitzing speed on the drums.
“It’s always been the most fun for me to play fast, like Paul Bostaph in Slayer — he’s the ultimate over-player,” he explains. “I started getting my hands fast. My teacher taught me really good hand technique. It’s the way you hold the sticks and the motion: I ended up playing thumbs up [he moves his hands so his thumbs are on top of his fists, parallel to each other with the thumb-tips pointing directly at you], and everything started getting real easy. I was just always pushing myself to be fast with my hands, especially when I played in punk bands and stuff.
“With my feet, I initially had a problem going fast and being consistent. I’d be able to run six miles, but I couldn’t keep up double bass that long because it was strenuous. My problem was always that my left foot couldn’t go as fast as my right, so I just sat with a metronome and played only with my feet. You have to kill yourself to get the technique pounded into your left foot, just doing it over and over again. Every day I would try to increase the speed a little bit, and now I can do it at like 220 bpm.”
A review you read of one of Avenged Sevenfold’s past albums makes particular note of The Reverend’s skill with single strokes, so you ask him if that’s a key to his unique sound and speedy delivery. “It’s almost always single strokes,” he confirms. “The whole album, except the song ’Betrayed’ and another super-long one, everything’s rimshot on the album, every snare hit. I find rimshotting gives a certain power, and I like the power of rimshotting all the fills. It’s good for cutting through. You can go as fast as you want without rimshotting and [your playing] won’t cut through as much. It doesn’t sound as intense: it sounds like a double stroke, which doesn’t come across as sounding as intense in metal. If you’re relentlessly supplying power through rimshots, it benefits everything I think.”
While many drummers who like to experiment and stand out in the mix often draw the wrath of their bandmates, The Reverend enjoys a relationship with his group where they encourage him to constantly mix things up, adding much more to the song than just a human click track for them to shred against. “I like to use the drums and the drumbeat as another hook — just as important as the guitar part, not backing it,” he emphasizes. “Unless I’m doing a straight one-two, I like to change something up, even if it’s just the hi-hat going to the ride. It changes the texture and feel of the song, makes it more interesting, and feels like it’s moving along. I can’t stand redundancy. Obviously, you’d have to be a drummer to latch onto it, but I think the changes are as important as the vocal or guitar. I approach all the parts and beats as if they are.
“I try to be super-tasteful — I’m not just going balls-out all the time. There’s a lot of drummers that can blow people’s minds if it’s a drum solo, but that’s not what it’s about. You’ve got to write for the music, but you’ve got to get your chops in so you can be tasty. My band is awesome. I’d go crazy if I were in a band where I couldn’t do anything. There’d be no point in me being in a band like that — just get another drummer who can groove really well. I’m lucky because Avenged Sevenfold are all my best friends, they’re really supportive and into the drums, and they wanted the drums to be more intense on this album. They wanted me to play more, and no one thinks I overplay. On songs like ’Beasts And The Harlot’ there’s spots designated for drum fills and solos. Drums are awesome, but they’re often neglected. I don’t see why bands wouldn’t like to have interesting drums on their album. Being in a metal rock band, you have leeway to do more.”
CHECKING YOUR NOTES from the listening session, you see there are a lot of fine points on drumming technique you want to ask him about. For “Beasts And The Harlot” you wrote, “pummeling drums … lightning intro … good solid groove in verses … fill flurries … punk metal drive … athletic … murderous double bass … mind-blowing speed and combos in outro.” For “Blind In Chains” you wrote, “nonstop high-speed shreds swallowed up by space … chainsaw motor bursts of double bass … exciting drumming … expansive songs.”
The Reverend is impressed by your interpretations, and gives you some detailed insights in return. “I love to incorporate fast tom and snare fills over double bass,” he says. “I’m influenced by Machine Head, that drummer turned me onto it. A fill that you would normally do with your hands, you throw double bass under it to match. It sounds cool — like you’re doing more than you are, almost. If you’re keeping steady double bass and you break it up with your hands over it, you don’t have to play a fast hand fill to get that fast feel across. One of my favorite creative things on this album is on ’Blind In Chains,’ this little drum break that’s a rudimentary foot fill. I love just doing rudiments with your feet, and I will definitely do more of that on the next album.”
The Reverend notes that he purposefully makes uses of his entire kit, rather than getting locked into one zone around his ride or hi-hat. “It’s good when you have a lot of time to think about writing parts. You can do what you’d naturally play between one tom and snare during the improvisation when you first play something, then sit and think about it later and make a conscious decision to go between the highest tom and lowest tom to make it more interesting. Deliberately think about spreading it around, because you’ll naturally do what’s easiest when you’re improvising and playing live, unless it’s all written out.
“You’re inclined to push it to your limits, but when playing live you don’t want to mess up. I talked about it with my band, and everyone else can mess up, but if the drums mess up it’s a train wreck. I stick pretty closely to the material playing live, although over a course of weeks it builds and I’ll improvise and freak the band out for one show. Then I get it out of my system. Otherwise, they forget you’re there! Our singer’s a really big drumming fan, and there’s certain fills that I would never change — he’s always listening for them. You underplay on the record and overplay live. You never get it right where you should be.”
Many people who hear City Of Evil will definitely find The Reverend guilty of overplaying, and you’re curious if that’s something he worries about. “In a metal band, overplaying is a much different concept,” he states. “There are certain parts that my instinct is to put fills everywhere all the time, and play more than I actually do. Once I throw around ideas with my band and our producer, I tend to listen to the band more and ignore the producer and do whatever I want.
“Things are a lot different now from when the drums first started. There was no such thing as a drum fill — it was only there for rhythm and percussion. It’s constantly getting more experimental. I don’t think I overplay. I try not to. There’s fills and parts I wrote that aren’t on the album, and there’s so much stuff that I can think of in my head that I want to put out there. I cram it on the album just to show off. That’s my instinct: you want to do as much as possible, but mostly I’ve got to look out for the vocals. The thing is that I definitely feel out a song. Most of our songs are upbeat, fast, and energetic, and I think it calls for crazy drumming. There’s two other songs on the album that don’t have anything crazy at all. Once a song is written I’ll put as much crazy stuff as I can without stepping on any toes. Another song I’ll approach and say, ’I’m not putting anything crazy into it.’ As long as you can have the best of both worlds, I enjoy being solid and laying down a track for a song, but taking it easy is enjoyable sometimes.
“Avenged Sevenfold never did follow any of the rules. We didn’t care, and we never will. That’s pretty much what it comes down to.”
YOU ARE GRATEFUL to The Reverend for these philosophical musings, and especially that last statement, because seasoned journalist that you are, you instantly recognize it as the “stinger” quote that you can end your article with. You talk for a little while longer, but besides calling the Warped Tour “shallow” and overcrowded with bands, The Reverend doesn’t saying anything else essential. Then you realize you still don’t know what his real name is, so you ask.
“Jimmy,” he says.
You ask him if he has a last name. He thinks about it for what feels like a long time.
“Sullivan,” he tells you.
Now your article really is complete. You start to put away your laptop and The Reverend asks if you want anything to drink from the refrigerator, then brings you back a can of 7-Up. You shoot the breeze for a few minutes more and think about what a good interview it turned out to be, and how glad you are that it came together after all. The Reverend tells you how great it was to talk about drums, instead of the same old band stuff.
Still, it really is time to get going on all your other work now, so you stand up, grab a handshake, and head for the door. Before you walk out, The Reverend gives you his email address and tells you to keep in touch. Definitely.
Drums: Drum Workshop
1. 22" x 20" Bass Drum
2. 14" x 5.5" Bell Brass Snare
3. 10" x 8.5" Tom
4. 12" x 9.5" Tom
5. 14" x 11" Tom
6. 16" x 14" Tom
Cymbals: Sabian
A. 14" AAX Metal Hi-hats
B. 18" AA Metal-X China
C. 8" Mike Portnoy Signature Splash
D. 10" Mike Portnoy Signature Splash
E. 18" AAX Metal Crash
F. 19" AA Metal-X Crash
G. 24" AAX Metal Ride
The Reverend also uses DW hardware, Evans heads, and Pro-Mark sticks.
Edited by giada7x - 11/12/2019, 17:16
