Back in June Avenged Sevenfold sacked their drummer Arin Ilejay due to creative differences and today they’ve announced a worthy replacement to sit behind the kit in Brooks Wackerman, who used to be in Bad Religion.
Ilejay took over in 2009 after the tragic passing of their former drummer The Rev, and a stint with Dream Theatre demon Mike Portnoy , but even back then Wackerman was in contention for the role.
The band’s frontman M.Shadows took to Chris Jericho’s radio show with Wackerman to announce the news (via Metal Injection) saying, “It was one of the names we were throwing around when Jimmy passed away in terms of who was going to step up for Nightmare.”
“But at the time he was also busy with Bad Religion and it was also … people were going to look at it differently because he was a punk drummer at this point.”
The news comes just a week after it was revealed that Wackerman had left Bad Religion citing that he wanted to “pursue another path.” It looks like Avenged Sevenfold was that path.
The band also gave some more insight as to why it didn’t work with Ilejay. It just became increasingly difficult to be on the same page, not only touring, but with writing and just where we want to take things,” said Shadows.
“We’re just a bunch of guys who are all over the place and we have a bunch of different influences and we need somebody who can instantly … who can sit there and say, ‘Yeah, I’ve got that influence too or I understand why we’re gonna go here. I understand why we’re going to do that.'”
The band eventually decided that Wackerman was the man for the job and approached him without anybody else in mind to fill the spot.
“It wasn’t like we were going to start trying guys out and we were serious about this change,” Shadows said.
“It was like if Brooks is willing to do this, that’s what we want to do. So it wasn’t like we were gonna just start looking for drummers.”
Avenged Sevenfold haven’t released an album since 2013’s Hail To The King but by the sounds of it they’re looking to ramp things up a bit on the next release with Wackerman.
“The idea of the last record was a very stripped down sound and the idea of the next is a not very stripped down sound,” Shadows said.
Watch: Brooks Wackerman Drum Solo
