Avenged Sevenfold's M Shadows admits he once thought the Offspring were sellouts: "Yep, I was that guy"

Avenged Sevenfold frontman M Shadows has revealed an amusing aside relating to his lifelong love of punk rock music. Tweeting yesterday, the singer noted that he, like millions of other punk and pop punk fans from the 90s, first got into The Offspring courtesy of their 1994 major breakthrough album Smash - though he goes on to admit that by the time The Offspring released that album's follow-up, 1997's Ixnay On The Hombre, he had taken on something of an elitist attitude towards the band.

"I first heard The Offspring on the world famous [California radio station] KROQ when I was a kid," he says. "I bought their 10 million selling album Smash and fell in love with it. By the time their next album came out I called them 'sellouts'. Yep, I was that guy."

Responding to a fan who suggested it was "almost a thing to be cool" to label bands sellouts in that era, Shadows agrees, adding: "Yeah. It was def an era…punk had such a raw sound but when NOFX, Bad Religion and all those Epitaph and Fat [Wreck Chords] bands hit the scene, it was more polished, so the old schoolers hated it. The next gen got even poppier."

Shadows goes on to state that his "fav era is 90s Epitaph and Fat bands", before listing this three favourite Offspring albums as Smash, 1992's Ignition and, interestingly, 2008's Rise And Fall, Rage And Grace.

Avenged Sevenfold have been working on the follow-up to 2016 album The Stage for some time now, with a release believed to be planned either near the end of this year or in early 2023. At the start of the year, Shadows revealed an unexpected influence on Avenged's current writing process: Kanye West.

"We’re very influenced by Kanye West," he explained. "The thing about Kanye is that he is pulling from such great soul music. I didn’t grow up with that stuff – my dad listened to Boston and Alice Cooper, I didn’t get that taste of black music and old soul. So, diving deep into jazz musicians… we’re not trying to do a jazz record, but the chord changes and progressions are so eye-opening to us.”