Avenged Sevenfold frontman M Shadows is happy to admit that he doesn't know a great deal about Abu Dhabi.
"Most Americans know it is a rich place and I've seen some stuff in the movies," he says, over a shaky phone line from Los Angeles.
"I have had friends that have been out there on business and they say it is a beautiful place, great architecture and golf courses. Other than that, well, we are an open book."
Not that being strangers in a new country is anything new for heavy metal five-piece Avenged Sevenfold (AX7), who have played in Brazil, Mexico and Japan as well as military bases in Kuwait and Iraq over the past decade.
And the UAE, for its part, is hardly the musical backwater that it was 10 years ago, even in terms of heavy metal. Metallica and Guns ‘N Roses have stomped the boards at Yas Island over the course of 2011 and 2012, while Iron Maiden played in Dubai in 2009. Local bands are also making waves, with local boys Nervecell at the forefront of the UAE's domestic metal scene.
"If Metallica and Iron Maiden can go there it really does open the doors for smaller bands like us," Shadows says.
Describing AX7 as a small band, however, may be a bit of an understatement.
Compared to veterans Metallica, with 30 years of touring behind them, Shadows' crew are certainly in a lower league, but the band that formed in 1999 in Huntingdon Beach, California, have come a long way.
AX7 started young, with founding guitarists Synyster Gates and Zacky Vengeance, Shadows and the late James "The Rev" Sullivan, on drums, just 18 years old when they released their first album Sounding the Seventh Trumpet.
Bassist Johnny Christ joined in 2003 and, as the band released their second album, Waking the Fallen, the big leagues beckoned and AX7 moved from small rock label Hopeless Records to Warner Brothers.
By the time City of Evil, the band's third album, was released, AX7 were selling 30,000 copies a week and had noticeably moved away from metalcore — the flash-in-the-pan, riff-heavy genre that dominated the metal scene in the first half of the last decade — and towards a more classic hard rock sound.
The most notable thing for longer-term fans was the lack of screaming on the album and move towards a more melodic sound, something that was cemented on their fourth album, which was self-titled. Pushed on the change in tack, as AX7 tour their fifth album, Nightmare, Shadows is unabashed.
Evolved
"The metalcore thing was a very young thing for us, I mean, we haven't put out a metalcore album in 10 years. We've always listened to bands like Metallica and Pantera, and our sound just evolved and we were suddenly bored of throwing out 50 riffs in one song," he says.
"There was a lot more screaming on Nightmare than on the previous album, but it's not a conscious decision, we try to make the best songs possible. If you sit down and try to write a song in a particular style you are shooting yourself in the foot."
Metalcore, with their limited shelf-life, never filled arenas however; so has the band had to change things up as the audiences shift from their hundreds to tens of thousands, we wonder?
"It hasn't really changed anything," Shadows says. "The shows have got bigger, there's more production — it's more exciting — [but] the audiences haven't changed with the venues."
To go from loving bands like Metallica, Shadows says, to sharing a stage with them is an incredible privilege, and a high point for the singer personally. The group were picked early as a support band for Metallica, who are famously hands on about choosing their own support acts, and have since toured with them both in the US and internationally.
"Playing with Metallica in Mexico [was a high point]," Shadows says, sounding as though he still gets excited about it. "[We were] basically playing these huge shows with the bands we grew up listening to."
"The first time we played Mexico there were 2,000 kids, then 5,000 and then — when we played with Metallica — 150,000."
Shaken
But there have been some significant low points too. AX7 was shaken to the core in 2008 when drummer and childhood friend Sullivan was found dead in his home. The loss caused a great deal of soul searching in the band and the initial response was for AX7 to call it quits.
Looking back, Shadows says, staying on was the right decision.
"It would have been a failure if we had just stopped playing music," he says. "We feel it is what he would have wanted us to do and that it is the best way to carry on his spirit."
But finding a replacement for their old friend has not been easy. AX7 initially recruited Dream Theatre drummer Mike Portnoy, who recorded Nightmare with the band and looked poised to join as Sullivan's replacement until both Portney and AX7 announced on their websites in late 2010 that his role would not be permanent.
New drummer Arin IIejay joined in early 2011 and is still a member today, but the proof of whether the band will gel as they once did will be the writing of a new album, scheduled to begin after the world tour that includes Abu Dhabi this Friday.
"Right now Arin does a great job of learning the parts but the reality is that when we sit down and write the only person we're ever worked with is Jimmy, and we've been doing that since we were 12 years old," he says. "He is the only one I ever wanted to sit down and write songs with, have a beer with."
Cementing the line up for AX7 in the wake of Sullivan's death is undoubtedly the biggest challenge the band has met in their careers and lives so far, but for now things are looking stable. It bodes well for AX7 that whether it is changing their sound, finding a new drummer or winning fans in a diverse range of countries, they have always shown their versatility.
The next challenge will be winning fans in the Middle East, but on the cusp of AX7's visit to Abu Dhabi, Shadows is not fazed.
"Metal music translates. Whether you go to South America or Asia or Europe, if you're a metalhead you enjoy metal music, wherever you live," he says.
"For us, it's just a matter of getting there."
Don't miss it
Avenged Sevenfold will perform at Flash Forum, Yas Island, on Friday. Tickets, priced Dh315, are available from thinkflash.ae and Virgin Megastores. The iMan return bus service from Dubai to Yas Island is available for Dh85, which must be purchased with concert tickets through thinkflash.ae.
