“I wasn't trying to make a retro album. I went through a Fractal”: Avenged Sevenfold’s Zachary Baker rides alone on Dark Horse – cooking up a country album with little more than a modeler and an Epiphone acoustic

Rock stars ditching walls of cranked stacks for acoustic guitars and a country twang is nothing new. If anything, it’s become somewhat of a default second-act career trajectory, claiming everyone from Foo Fighters’ Chris Shiflett to pop-punk royalty Jaret Reddick and even Staind frontman Aaron Lewis.

The latest rocker to make the leap is none other than Zacky Vengeance – aka Zachary Baker – guitarist of metal titans Avenged Sevenfold. Zacky is using his own name for this new project, announcing his debut solo album, Dark Horse – and by his own admission, it wasn't exactly part of the plan.

“I’d never ever anticipated doing a solo album – it wasn’t something that was on my radar,” he tells Guitar World.

With Avenged Sevenfold taking a near five-year hiatus, Baker found himself with something he’d rarely had before: free time.

“I’d just go up to my studio and play acoustic guitar and sing, play piano, play electric guitar, and just record anything that I liked. I kept coming back to these basic songs, singer-songwriter, three-chords-and-melodies type stuff. Which is not typically what we do in Avenged,” says Baker.

“I really am a huge fan of it. I love the element of simplicity in music. I can appreciate complex songs and progressive songs, I love it all, but there's something that really speaks to me about simple songs; it's the reason that I got into music.”

Fans who’ve followed Zacky’s career from the early days won’t be surprised to hear where those roots lie.

“In the beginning, I was just listening to punk-rock bands, to be honest, like The Misfits and Social Distortion. Bands that can use the same chords for a verse as they use for a chorus.”

But his musical horizons stretch considerably further than three-chord punk these days.

“I love listening to the old stuff like Johnny Cash and Marty Robbins. I love Willie Nelson. I love the type of music that they were making back when you had to stand in a room and play into one microphone and sing.

​“I'm a huge fan of interesting voices,” he continues. “People like Bob Dylan and Tom Petty. For modern country, I like Zach Bryan. I just feel like there’s an element of humanity to it, and you know, great songs.”

Dark Horse is, at its core, a deeply personal record. One where Baker wears his heart firmly on his sleeve. Nowhere is that more apparent than on The Storm, a song that chronicles his life from the early days of the band right through to the tragic passing of drummer Jimmy “The Rev” Sullivan and beyond.

​“With every single song on the album, they kind of shook me to my core,” declares Baker. “I had to go as deep as I could go with what I have going on in my life. And all the feelings that I've gone through.

“It brought up real emotions about how I felt about Jimmy and everything leading up to it, and I never really got to write the song that I wanted to myself. It wasn’t going to be an entire ode to Jimmy. It was going to be a song, and as it was being written, I was talking about the early days in the band and the stuff that we went through, and that’s why it’s so sincere,” he says calmly.

“It was a chance for me to get to say exactly how I felt in that moment. Like with the album Nightmare with Avenged, Matt [Shadows] wrote the most heartfelt lyrics that are so perfect and passionate that I feel that we got our point across as best friends and a band, but for me, I wanted to have that one impactful moment. I didn’t want to write an entire album about it by myself. I just needed that one impactful moment.”

But recording a song about a lost friend was never going to be easy, and it certainly brought up feelings of grief for Zacky.

“While I was writing that, I think while I was playing the organ, I just lost it. I was in tears. It was hard to recover, hard to sing that part,” recalls Baker.

“I never went back and re-recorded the vocals. They’re kind of rushed. I didn’t want to do multiple takes. I didn’t go back and try to make it perfect. It’s like, yeah, they sound like that because I was fucking sad, I was crying. I think that’s real.”

Now, when you picture the making of a country record, the mind drifts to dusty old tube amps and worn-in vintage flat-tops, but Baker's process on Dark Horse was anything but traditional. Admitting his limitations in the studio, he explains that leaning into a DIY punk attitude was precisely what gave him the confidence to track it himself.

“I just decided I’m going to record the same way I did when I was 15, in my punk bands,” he says. “Do it by any means necessary. Whatever gets the music and the sounds I want recorded.”

Surprisingly, Baker reveals that he used digital amp modelers for the majority of the amp sounds.

“So honestly, I used a lot of the Fractals, because that’s what we’ve been using with Avenged Sevenfold.

​“I’d like to say that I was using a lot of Twin Reverb amps and just bringing out all the classic stuff,” he says, laughing. “But with that said, I wasn’t trying to make a retro album. I’m not trying to do an entire vintage record on two-inch tape.

“It just wasn’t the tools that I had available to me, so I used what I had. I went through a Fractal. Went through all the sound banks and just tweaked the tones until they sounded right to me. I literally recorded it in the moment, tweaked it till it sounded good, laid it down, and then called it a day.”

For his guitar choices, he says that, as well as using his faithful Schecter signature models, he wasn’t scared to experiment with different options.

“I was picking guitars that I've never ever even thought about using with Avenged. I have a really nice collection of Nashville Teles and Strats. I love those guitars. They’re so fun to play,” he says. “I was bringing out my Schecters, and bringing out guitars Schecter has made me that I've never brought on stage, like a couple of hollowbody guitars.

“It was just a chance for me to basically pull out anything from the arsenal and capture the sound in that moment.”

When it comes to acoustics, Baker is quick to champion both the premium and the budget models. While he’s partial to his Martins, it’s an affordable Epiphone that’s become one of his most-reached-for guitars.

“My favorite acoustic guitars right now are Martin and Epiphone. So I have a few Martins that I bring out with Avenged, and I've used them in the studio. I don’t even know what models they are,” he says with a smile.

“I love the look of the classic Gibsons, but I don't want to give up-and-coming guitarists the wrong impression – that they have to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars to do what they love – so, I came across the Epiphone Hummingbird, and they sound amazing, they play amazing, and they look amazing.”

Yes, but is it on the album? “It absolutely is on the record... I’d always just pick up whatever was next to me, was in tune, and sounded right. I absolutely used it,” says Zacky.

​“So if it’s good enough for me, someone who is considered a professional guitar player, then it’s good enough for anyone. That’s what I want to always instill in people, because I was never turned off music because of my lack of ability to afford crazy guitars – it was all about picking up whatever you could.

“My first guitar was a Squier Strat that probably cost about 150 bucks, and I cherished it, and I’ve never lost that mentality. I still feel the exact same way. It’s not about what you’re playing. It’s about who you are and what you're doing with it.”

• Dark Horse is out now.