"You’re playing for 5 or 6,000 men and women who all have M16s on their shoulders. And they’re trying to pit, and it’s pretty crazy" How Avenged Sevenfold and Call Of Duty forged one of music and gaming's greatest relationships

M. Shadows had always been into Call of Duty. But it was when his best friend and Avenged Sevenfold bandmate Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan passed away on December 28 2009, at the age of 28, that he really got into Call of Duty.

"It was something I was able to go do and stay in the house and not be outside and deal with people," he told Rolling Stone. "But I also found a community online where I was able to escape all of the feelings I was having in losing my best friend. So for a couple of years, I just played video games online with my friends."

We all deal with grief in different ways, but being in the middle of making their fifth album, which would eventually become 2010's Nightmare, the need to escape from the constant questioning of what the band were going to do next was an absolute necessity for Shadows.

Gaming had been something that he clung to throughout his whole life. From spending his childhood studying every fatality possible to become a master of Mortal Kombat, an arcade system that he now has installed in his house, to making his way through every adventure Nintendo wanted to throw at Link in the Legend of Zelda series, it has been a solace for as long as he could remember.

The band had also managed to forge its own relationship with gaming in its early days thanks to an initiative put forward by Steve Schnur, who, before joining EA Sports in 2002, was Vice President of A&R at Capitol Records. In wanting to start featuring contemporary bands at sports games, the band sent over their second full-length, Waking The Fallen, which he loved and went on to place Chapter Four in Madden 2004, NHL 2004, and NASCAR Thunder 2004. A key element in putting the band in front of entirely new audiences.

It was this brand of mutual understanding and a desire to dive deeper into connections between different industries, matched with perfect timing, that would later allow Shadows' passion for Call of Duty to reach the next level.

That came from Mark Lamia, studio head at Treyarch, the creators of Black Ops, and more specifically, Call of Duty Zombies. Up until 2011, the company had used composer Kevin Sherwood for their music, developing a fanbase in its own right because of its metal-influenced sound. Though Lamia wanted to take it to a whole new place, a spot where a real-life band could put their stamp on their games. In this case and at this time, that was for Call Of The Dead, the first of the Zombie spin-offs that would become part of the CoD universe. And with a connection to them through the band's A&R and Warner Records, Craig Aaronson, before he knew it, A7X was on his radar.

"I met with Matt, and it became clear that he was very ­serious about Call of Duty and had a passion for the franchise and loved it and got what we were trying to make," Lamia told Billboard back in 2013 on meeting the band for the first time. "It was one of those meetings where everything came together"

The result of the meetings was Not Ready To Die, an atmospherically creepy, devilishly heavy, undeniably catchy piece of metal ready made for slaughtering the undead. Penned in a four-day gap that the band had between the end of the Nightmare After Christmas tour with Stone Sour and Hollywood Undead that ran through January and Februry and the Welcome To The Family Tour with Three Days Grace, Sevendust, and Bullet For My Valentine which they spent the Spring on, it's a song that pulls directly from the lore of the game. Finding that balance between storytelling and delivering a straight-up banger managed to scratch both itches that Shadows had, and the result speaks volumes for that.

"I think they were excited that we already knew the story and were into it, and we wanted to make it fit with what Avenged Sevenfold does, but make it work with the storyline," he mentioned in an interview in 2011. "It’s not all about us, it’s about making a soundtrack."

Not Ready to Die (From "Call of the Dead") - YouTube

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The song itself needed to be unlocked within the level, an easter egg for those committed enough to collect the right items and put the effort in to be rewarded with something that little bit cooler. It's a model speaks to Shadows in the way that it allows those who want to discover the band to do that. Marrying those with the same passion as both them and the developers, he would much rather that be a way that someone finds out about them than through something like late night TV, a medium which A7X famously avoid.

“I don’t want the fair-weather fans, the soccer moms who watch Jimmy Kimmel to discover us that way,” Shadows told Billboard. “I want the people who grew up listening to AC/DC and Slayer, and if we can figure out the right way to have those people see a snippet of what you’d see at a festival or a live show, we’ll do it."

This also speaks to the band's relationship with the military, a part of the Call of Duty universe that connects to the real world. With every member having some connection through family or friends to the services, for Shadows that being his grandfathers and high school friends, splitting between the army, navy and marines, led the band to playing shows for troops in both Iraq and Kuwait in the past. Another example of knowing where their fans are and making sure that they are appreciated.

"Those men and women over in Iraq and Kuwait and different parts of the world, defending our country, they’re people we grew up with," he told Revolver in 2011. "They’re from our generation. So we figured we could go over there and entertain them. It’s the least we could do while they’re in harm’s way," before adding jokingly, "You’re playing for 5 or 6,000 men and women who all have M16s on their shoulders. And they’re trying to pit, and it’s pretty crazy."

Such was the success of Not Afraid To Die, two years later, the band were called back to the table for something even bigger for Black Ops II. Not just writing another song, which in this case was the rip-roaring Carry On, but them actually featuring as characters at the conclusion of the game.

Starring as themselves and playing a show for all of the antagonists and protagonists that have gone tooth and nail at each other throughout the game's story, as well as interacting and encouraging Raul Menendez and Frank Woods to play with them, it's as cool a nod as you can possibly get.

For Shadows, it's a song that allowed them to throw things back musically, pulling from classic rock titans like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest, something that would shine through even more on their 2014 full-length Hail To The King. That sense of being playful came through in the whole experience, from doing motion capture in the same studio that T2: Judgment Day and Iron Man to delivering voice acting. It was a reminder that it's okay to have fun from time to time.

"It's like hearing yourself on a voice recorder," he told ARTISTdirect.com about seeing himself digitised. "You cringe a little bit, but you're excited, and it's fun. I didn't know how it would go over with everybody. I'm really happy and proud of how it came out. We're trying to have fun and doing an entertaining little thing at the end of the game. It's not meant to be taken too seriously."

It's in this sentiment that the concept of "selling out" may come to the table, a conversation that has plagued many a rock and metal band throughout their careers. Be it making music that fans deem to be pandering to a certain demographic or appearing in something that doesn't suit them, Shadows admits that it's something that Avenged Sevenfold really cared about at the start of their careers.

"I was just a kid, you know," he told Rockfeed in 2024. "It was a different thing back then, because it was seeing punk rock become mainstream, and it was weird. The Offspring? Green Day? Blink? They were massive, your mom was listening to it."

But when such a term concerns the band's relationship with CoD, he simply laughs it off.

"The thing is that we can back this. If someone said to us, ‘You’re a sellout,’ I'm a sellout? Just look at my stats, bro."

Avenged Sevenfold - Carry On (featured in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2) [Official Music Video] - YouTube

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In the years that have followed, the connection between A7X and CoD has only deepened and intensified. 2015 saw them compose their 3rd piece of music for the franchise, Jade Helm, harking back to the frantic metalcore of their early days, which features in the multiplayer mode of Black Ops III. Then in 2018, they provided Mad Hatter, a hard rock ballad of the highest calibre, for Black Ops 4, featuring in the Zombies map IX, with Shadows also now becoming a fully playable character. The band have just made it to Number Five recently with the release of Magic, taken from the newly-released Black Ops 7, a track that fits perfectly in with where they are currently at off the back of 2023's stunningly bonkers Life Is But A Dream...

Now, after nearly 15 years together, it is fair to say that both parties are synonymous with each other. Each growing, changing and experimenting in their own unique ways whilst still staying true to who they are at their cores, more than anything, it speaks to the eternal nature of music and gaming media. That no matter how much the landscape changes, some things remain timeless. And by putting themselves out there, speaking to their passions and doing something cool because it is cool, they have set up and established a whole new landscape for themselves.

There's been this whole fan base that's heard of us strictly through video games," Shadows told Game Informer in 2015. "We keep doing it because not only are we fans of games, but the fan base keeps growing because of games. It's the best way for artists to get an outlet."

And long may that continue.