Rock in Peace

The world lost one of the few good drummers out there this week.

Jimmy Sullivan, or The Reverend Tholomew Plague, of Avenged Sevenfold is dead.

Avenged Sevenfold was really my first "heavy" band back in 7th grade. They're somewhere between Green Day and Danzig on my Heavyometer. It really was a big step up from 80's music and pop-punk-shiz.

Once upon a time in 7th grade I knew this kid named Lukas. And he was always walking about skool singing Avenged Sevenfold songs. I didn't know who they were at the time, though. Being a smart cookie I looked them up. My first song from them was either Almost Easy or Critical Acclaim (I think the former). Either way I was hooked. Later when I heard their older stuff I loved them even more, coz it's way better. Their music got me through some tough times when I think about it.

And, in my opinion everyone in that band is really hot. :D

Then the summer after 7th grade I bought All Excess, that documentary on A7X. There was a lot of footage of Jimmy being a fuckin' maniac; chasing ducks, being drunk with Synyster Gates, or singing a little song about grapes in the mouth (see video of the moment). The whole thing shows what an awesome vibe that band had.

Most importantly, however, is that Jimmy could fucking slam the skins. He got his first set when he was 2 years old! Oh my god. Oddly enough I wanted to be a drummer around the time I got into A7X. Bass called louder though. I digress. I can remember watching YouTube videos of The Rev doing solos and having my little 13-year-old mind blown. He turned me into the machine-gun-drum-fiend that I am today for more brutal bands like DethKlok.

Two days ago, on December 29th, I got home from seeing Sherlock Holmes (good movie by the way) and checked Facebook. According to someone's wall post (Graham), The Rev was dead. I wasn't sure if he was lying (again), so I Googled it and was faced with the headline "Avenged Sevenfold Drummer Jimmy Sullivan Dead of Natural Causes at 28". I was shocked. It probably had to do with drugs but...god. 28?! I remember reading a while ago about how Avenged was considering a concept album. Who knows if that's ever going to ever happen now. Who knows if Avenged will even play again? If they do, it'll suck, and even if they're alright the energy will be different. Jimmy was one of the few talented drummers out there. It sucks that he had to die so young. I wish I could have seen them live, but now that's never going to happen.

I'm still really depressed about The Rev's death even though it's been two days since I found out. Quite embarrasingly, I cried for an hour yesterday over it. In my defense, I guess it took that long for everything to catch up to me. Fuck, I used to have whole conversations back in the day about how awesome he was! And watching All Excess again yesterday made me feel even worse for the surviving members of Avenged Sevenfold. He was everyone's best friend. He should not have died, not now.

What can I say? Don't do hard drugs. RIP Jimmy. Have fun drumming in heaven. Or hell. Either way...