Watch Avenged Sevenfold get interviewed by Jamey Jasta on Headbangers Ball back in 2004

Headbangers Ball was the place to be when it came to finding new and exciting heavy music on your TV throughout the 90s and early 00s. From 2003 to 2007, Hatebreed's Jamey Jasta helmed the ship, dishing out interviews and videos from everybody from Shadows Fall to Dream Theater. And in 2004, he welcomed a fresh-faced Avenged Sevenfold into the studio for a chat, fresh off the back of releasing their second album, Waking The Fallen and in the middle of a tour with My Chemical Romance.

The band had spent the Summer of 2003 travelling with the Warped Tour and were preparing to jump on it again in 2004. When asked by Jasta about how they felt about being part of the travelling roadshow, M Shadows “I love the Warped Tour audience”, before The Rev interjects, saying, “It’s fun to shock them.”
M picks up again by saying, “It’s really exciting to see all these kids say, ‘What the hell is this?’ They don’t really know what to think about it, but then there are a lot of kids who are there for you. There are a lot of heavier bands on it, Poison The Well and a bunch of bands like that, so it brought the kids in. But I think it’s really cool to show these kids a different kind of music, especially when they are going out to see a bunch of pop-punk bands."

Being able to surprise people was something that the band thrived on during their early days, and not just in terms of playing breakdowns to New Found Glory fans. The fast, raw and relentless metalcore sound that existed on Waking The Fallen as well as 2001's Sounding The Seventh Trumpet was often spliced with heavy metal worship in form of extravagant solos and piercing melodies, as well as long and winding epics. That's something that Jasta picks up when considering I Won't See You Tonight Part 1, which is a near-nine-minute piece of heartbreaking rock balladry. M reacts to this by stating, "Most of our favourite bands are the Guns N Roses, the Metallicas, The Megadeths, the type of bands that do songs that were longer in structure but took you somewhere. They weren’t just three and a half minutes, verse/chorus/verse." Even at such an early stage in their career, the band were proud to bear their love of the classics on their sleeves, something that became even more evident as they grew in the years to follow.

It all rounds off with the playing of their video for their track Unholy Confessions, which was also the band's first track to get a music video. The video in question is full of live footage showing off their fans going absolutely fucking crazy. The band explain why they made this a focus of the visual, with M saying, "All the fans in it are really passionate about the band. We wanted to give back to them. We have some really dedicated fans, some of the best fans, I think, in the world. This is pretty much a video about them for them."

How lovely is that?