Johnny Christ interview (excerpt)

You guys wrote the record with The Rev, and then he passed and of course everybody is really sad – my condolences. Do you feel like the final, realized version of the album was true to his vision?

Yeah. I really think that it’s something that he’d be proud of. For the first 2 or 3 weeks after his passing, we weren’t even thinking about the band. It was a thought in our mind, but definitely not at the forefront – something further back. We were more just devastated and in shock and didn’t know what we were going to do. As we started to think more and more about the band and that became part of the forefront of our minds, we realized that we have this record. If we didn’t have this record already written, I don’t know what we’d be doing now. We had this record written that he was so involved in and was so excited about. We wanted to get it out there. So we started thinking about who we could get to play drums. We had a lot of this demoed out – demoed out drum tracks and everything. They were one-takers [drum performances] that he wouldn’t have been very proud of. He was always a perfectionist when it came to fills and everything like that. He would have had something worked out, and we knew that that wouldn’t have done it justice.

We gave a call to one of his heroes, Mike Portnoy. He had sent his condolences within the first day. He’s a really awesome dude. He came out and was very humble. We kind of ran him through a Jimmy 101 thing. If we heard something on the demo that was very classic Rev, we made sure that he would play it. He was very cool about it – someone who has been around the block from Dream Theater and everything to coming in with us to let us use his ability to sound more like an Avenged Sevenfold record. That was really cool.

Did Portnoy at all make any suggestions as far as the creative aspect of it or did he do pretty much exactly what you guys told him to?

He was pretty much very cool with about it. He said “yeah, I’m your vessel. We’ll keep going until it’s something that you like.” That’s very much what the process was with the drum tracks. A lot of times we’d give a very vague description of something. “Okay, at this part we want you to do a little cymbal work.” That was where he would go “okay, I’ll give you a few different things and you choose which one you like best.” That was very much the process of going through the drums which I think was very cool.

Looking back on it now, at the time we were still in the very early stages of grieving and stuff. I think making this record was very therapeutic for that – going through the drum tracks and everything, looking back on it and working with Mike Portnoy (who we all grew up listening to) it was a pretty cool thing. It was bittersweet.

Were there other guys that you considered?

Yeah, there are a lot of people who came out to Jimmy’s funeral and everything – Vinnie Paul and Brooks Wackerman and stuff like that. They had offered, and we just kind of felt that Mike Portnoy stylistically had a close fit to Jimmy’s style. It kind of worked out that way that he was going to be the better fit for this record. It was really cool because there were a lot of other people like Vinnie Paul that came out with “we’ll help you out in any way that we can.” That was really cool as well.

What lead then to the decision to have Mike Portnoy come out and tour with you as opposed to: a) looking for a permanent replacement or b) just hiring some other fill-in?

We’re not ready for any kind of permanent replacement at this time. It’s still way too soon, and the thought of it just makes me sick. Going through it while recording the record, he said “I got some time off coming up. I don’t know if you guys are planning on touring this record or not, but if you are I would love to get my hands into it and give it a shot live.” It was very cool of him to help us with the transition. We’re not ready to have a replacement like I said. When we were recording, we weren’t even positive that we were ready to tour. We have been taking baby steps every day. It’s still very nerve wracking to know in a couple of weeks that we’re taking off to start touring.

It’s going to be weird and everything. With that, he kind of offered himself up and we’re like “okay, we’ll think about it.” When we decided that we needed to tour to get this record heard by as many people as we can, we asked him if he would like to come out and he said yeah. It all kind of worked out. It was happenstance that he had time off and was willing to do it. It will help us with the transition, I think, and maybe take us to the next step. I don’t know.

Yeah. He’s a pro. I’m sure he’ll roll with the punches and be just fine for you guys for now. So that’s good.

Yeah. We got along really well. Right off the bat, he’s just a very good guy. He’s got a good personality and a good soul.

One of the things that I love about Portnoy is that unlike so many guys in successful bands (especially at his age), he really stays in touch with the current music scene. I know he’d talked about you guys well before any of this happened. He really stays in touch. Even when he’s not touring, you can see him just coming out to see bands at shows in New York City which is really cool. It must have felt good to know that he was a fan of you guys and a fan of The Rev.

Yeah, absolutely.