Primal, but still evolving

EVEN with his ball cap pulled low and his heavily tattooed arms folded, Matt Sanders projects nothing of the gloom-and-doom-spouting persona that his alter ego, M. Shadows, exudes onstage. Not on this radiant afternoon in Orange County, minutes from where Avenged Sevenfold was born.

No, hours before the heavy-metal quintet’s rafter-shaking homecoming show at a sold-out UC Irvine Bren Events Center, the 24-year-old vocalist is euphoric. He declines a band mate’s offer of fare from In-N-Out -- a lead singer has to watch his figure, you know -- and talks excitedly about a vintage car he will pick up on the weekend. Almost giddy, he tells of crossing paths with some of his rock heroes a few nights before in San Francisco. His smile reveals a new set of platinum fronts on his teeth -- a grill of his own, metallic bling for a kid who just met Metallica.

“That was cooler to us than anything,” Sanders says of the backstage visit paid by James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich and Robert Trujillo after the young band’s show at the Fillmore last week. “Selling records doesn’t mean anything when you get to meet Metallica.”

Not that Avenged Sevenfold -- or A7X to the fans who decorate their environments, or bodies, with the band’s signature “Death Bat” logo -- isn’t hawking records. “City of Evil,” its third album and first for Warner Bros., has sold 294,000 copies since its June 7 release, and every stop on the pre-holidays leg of its tour sold out. With the single “Bat Country” earning radio play and the video for the Hunter S. Thompson homage cracking the Top 10 on MTV’s “Total Request Live,” A7X secured a spot at Saturday’s first night of the KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas shows at Gibson Amphitheatre.

“A metal band on ‘TRL,’ that’s insane,” guitarist Brian Haner says. “A band like us should not have a chance in hell of being on ‘TRL’ or having high spins on KROQ. It’s a one-in-a-million thing.”

Fred Jacobs, a Michigan-based consultant who works with rock radio stations, says, “Timing is everything, and it has been somewhat drought-like when it comes to new names on the hard-rock scene. There’s a fresh sound about the band.”

Credit the 6-year-old group with pushing all the right buttons, starting with their image and stage names. Besides Sanders as Shadows and Haner as Synyster Gates, guitarist Zachary Baker goes by Zacky Vengeance, bassist Jonathan Seward is Johnny Christ, and drummer Jimmy Sullivan is the Rev.

The band’s name derives from the biblical story of Cain and Abel, but Sanders’ lyrics sound like missives from the dark side. Seven-headed beasts, soulless men, torn flesh, raging fires -- they descend like the plague, which, of course, also earns mention. Sanders crows about all of them with requisite menace.

“Religion is such a center point of the world, it’s something that creates a lot of feeling in people,” says Sanders, who was reared in (and, he points out, kicked out of) a Catholic elementary school in Huntington Beach. “The [biblical] stories are great stories and have influenced a lot of heavy metal. They’re so metaphoric.

“Am I a gloomy person? No, I don’t think so, but when you’re writing aggressive songs it fits the part a little bit better.”

THAT Gothic bent suits Avenged Sevenfold’s musical bombast, which is not so much a blend of influences as an assemblage. “City of Evil” offers a collage of massive guitar swells, speed-metal riffs and impossibly intertwined vocals punctuated by drastic time-signature changes, artillery-fire drumming, pop choruses and even strings.

“I think we’re just schizoid,” Sanders says. “When we write a song, we don’t just explore one idea and move on.”

Says Haner: “When you have five crazy guys who listen to all different kinds of music, you’re going to have a different sounding band.”

Avenged Sevenfold didn’t always sound like this. For two albums -- including the group’s 2003 sophomore effort “Waking the Fallen,” which sold 224,000 copies -- scream-o ruled. When the quintet forsook that style for a more classic metal approach, hard-core fans at first grumbled about A7X selling out to pressure from the major label.

“Musically, it made sense for them to go that direction,” says Louis Posen, president of L.A.-based Hopeless Records, for whom “Waking the Fallen” is the label’s all-time biggest seller. “The world needs another Guns N’ Roses right now, and I mean that in a good way. They’re not scared to push it, not scared to be the hard-asses of rock ‘n’ roll.”

Haner says the stylistic shift was a no-brainer: “First, no band wants to make the same album twice. And Matt has such a beautiful as well as brutal voice, we didn’t need to scream.”

“As you grow musically, you realize you don’t need to scream every part,” says Sanders, whose vocals now recall Axl Rose more than any screamer. (He even sported an armless GNR shirt for half the Irvine show). “We wanted to do something with a lot of attitude, a lot of swagger. We wanted to make a big, long, epic record.”

They did. If there was an initial outcry, the band squelched it this summer with performances as a co-headliner on the Vans Warped Tour. Says guitarist Baker: “I think maybe people said, ‘Wait a minute, I was a bit harsh at first.’ It takes more than one listen to get into a 75-minute album.”

Most of the 5,500 fans last week in Irvine were obviously repeat listeners. They shouted along with Sanders, roared when a string quartet joined A7X onstage and catapulted crowd surfers toward their hometown heroes. For a night, Irvine was their Paradise City.

“I think back to when I was younger, and this is what No Doubt must have felt like,” Baker says, noting another band with roots in O.C. “It’s a really weird, almost surreal feeling.”

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Kevin Bronson may be reached at weekend@latimes.com.

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KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas

Where: Gibson Amphitheatre, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City

When: 4 p.m. Saturday with System of a Down, Nine Inch Nails, Fall Out Boy, Avenged Sevenfold, Korn, Thrice and Rise Against

Also: 4 p.m. Sunday with Depeche Mode, Coldplay, the White Stripes, Jack Johnson, the Bravery, Death Cab for Cutie, Hot Hot Heat and Nada Surf

Price: Sold out

Info: www.kroq.com