AVENGED SEVENFOLD Shock With Experimental Statica and JARED LETO Accusations | The Podcast That Rocked

**Luke** (0:06)
Welcome back to The Podcast That Rocked. Weekly podcast that talks about peonies and the rock metal alternative and everything in between. My name is Luke.

**Alex** (0:17)
My name is Alex.

**Luke** (0:18)
And I'm sorry. None of this is my fault.
But I am sorry that it happened.

**Alex** (0:24)
Luke, I am sure hopeful none of this was your fault.

**Luke** (0:29)
You're all allowed to leave right now if you are squeamish, uncomfortable or easily grossed out.
Now, some of you might be thinking, you're just trying to be dramatic. I assure you this is the best content warning I could possibly give. We do a good job of keeping this PG-13 or lower because YouTube has restrictions for stuff like that.

**Alex** (0:56)
I mean, have we ever lied to you? We give you fair warning.

**Luke** (1:00)
Yes, but I'm just saying a lot of it in one episode is usually not the norm for us.

**Alex** (1:06)
No, but when we give a warning, it's for good reason.

**Luke** (1:09)
We have done that. We've always made sure everyone's aware. So people are already reacting appropriately in the chat, the steves, and it's not great.
I get it. Everyone's feelings are valid, especially on a week like this. Thank you so much, everyone on YouTube listening live to all the steves in the chat. If we hit 50 likes, we'll play one round of Festival Rocker Flop at least. We badly want you to play Festival Rocker Flop this week to have a little bit of attention off of everything we are about to discuss.

**Alex** (1:41)
Yes, please.

**Luke** (1:42)
Yes, this is not e-begging. This is us trying to balance our emotional psyche after some of the things we're going to talk about.

**Alex** (1:51)
He's in. Thank you.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:52)
Yeah.

**Luke** (1:53)
Someone said, yeah, it's TVMA now, Steve's.

**Alex** (1:57)
Well, welcome to 2026

**SPEAKER_3** (1:59)
Yeah.

**Luke** (2:02)
So final little bit of information. We played the Riot Fest ad at the beginning for all the Steve's. And everyone, this is your last chance because the contest ends at the end of the month. If you want to win passes, we're giving away multiple pairs to go to Riot Fest for free.
Hit us up on Instagram. Rules are real easy. It's the pinned post on Instagram. Follow both of us. Follow Riot Fest. Your eddard. I'd like that post too. Your eddard. Easy, right? We try to make it easy. So someone said, man, what did I miss? Oh, we'll update you.
But, uh, uh, uh.

**Alex** (2:40)
We'll let you know.

**Luke** (2:41)
Anything else before we get going?

**Alex** (2:44)
I tried to get you to postpone going. That's how hard we're trying to prevent this discussion. I think we just have to get over with, get it over with.

**Luke** (2:52)
Yes. We have a lot.
And the longer it would lay, the more dragged out it's going to be. So we really should get moving. So it sucks. But this is way past ripping off a bandaid. Do you get what I mean?

**Alex** (3:09)
Yeah.

**Luke** (3:09)
Band-aids don't leave lasting scars from the band-aid itself. For our main story is not gross, but it is head-scratching, upsetting, odd.

**Alex** (3:26)
Yep.

**Luke** (3:27)
Potentially headache-inducing, depending on how loud you listen to it.
I would like to point out there are two people that I know personally, who I wanted their opinions of, the first being my lovely wife, who thought I was being over-dramatic when I said how bad Avenged Sevenfold's new EP, Statica, was, the surprise four-track EP that came out Friday. She thought I was joking around. She went and listened to it, and before even telling me, she went straight to Instagram and posted a story saying, I'm so sorry, I can't believe I wasted 18 minutes of my life. I should have listened to my husband.

**Alex** (4:05)
It was only 18 minutes long?

**Luke** (4:08)
The four-track EP, I'm going to make sure I got this up on title, 18 minutes, seven seconds. The first track is like less than two and a half minutes.

**SPEAKER_3** (4:22)
Yeah, I'll say this.

**Luke** (4:24)
Yeah, I'll say this. If you ever want to feel like time stands still, you want to slow down the worth spinning, this is the album for you.

**Alex** (4:32)
That's exactly what I'm saying. I mean, I am.
Yeah, Gretchen nailed it in her story.

**Luke** (4:38)
Then today, I got a message from one Alex Gray. I can't pull it up because we're on Discord right now because I'm streaming, but I believe the words were, do you remember what you said? I'll let you take it.