BURBANK, CA (Warner Bros. Records) - Larger-than-life hard rockers
Avenged Sevenfold have been nominated for a coveted 2006 MTV Video
Music Award for Best New Artist for their turbocharged hit single and video "Bat Country." Acknowledging the truism that everything is cooler with bats in it, the video features the band careening down an open highway in a cherry-red convertible kitted out with giant bat wings, swatting bats with flyswatters as they go.
The "Bat Country" video, which was conceived by visionary director Marc Klasfeld (Foo Fighters, Jay-Z), was inspired by a line in the film adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's book "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" in which a character, who is hallucinating, says: "We can't stop here. This is bat country."
It's that kind of humor and creativity that has led the Huntington Beach, CA, quintet - M. Shadows, Synyster Gates, Zacky Vengeance, Johnny Christ, and The Reverend - to become "the new face of metal," as Alternative Press puts it. Kerrang! calls their most recent release, the gold-certified "City of Evil," "an unequivocal triumph... technically dazzling, fiendishly inventive, and wholly distinct from everything else you'll hear this year."
Avenged Sevenfold has graced the covers of such magazines as Alternative Press, Guitar World, Kerrang! and Revolver twice. Their wide appeal is exemplified by their headlining status on both the Vans Warped Tour in 2004 and 2005, and the 2006 Ozzfest, while also holding the Number One spot on MTV's "TRL" for "Bat Country."
The band have spent the last year touring non-stop behind "City of Evil," which also spawned the adrenalized hits "Beast and the Harlot" and "Seize the Day." They completed a spring U.S. arena tour and a month of European dates opening for personal heroes Guns N' Roses and Metallica. M. Shadows currently shares the September cover of Revolver Magazine with Metallica's James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich in which Ulrich's response to Shadow's query on Metallica's current musical influences is, "Honestly, it's you guys... You guys put out music that inspires us." Avenged Sevenfold most recently finished up a run as a mainstage headliner on Ozzfest.
The 2006 MTV Video Music Awards will be presented at Radio City Music Hall in New York City on August 31st.
