The Rev — James Owen Sullivan, born in 1981 — was Avenged Sevenfold's drummer, co-founder and one of its principal songwriters, a member from 1999 until his death in 2009. His drumming did not belong to the genre the band operated in. Sullivan played double kick at extremely high speed, but what set him apart was the phrasing: jazz-rooted fills, rhythmic displacement and a tendency to fill every bar with variation, closer to progressive metal than to Californian metalcore. He also sang, and his voice appears in harmonies and whole passages across several tracks. As a writer he was behind some of the most ambitious songs in the repertoire — "A Little Piece of Heaven", with its orchestral arrangement and the structure of a macabre operetta, and "Afterlife", among others. He was the element pushing the band outside its own formula. He died on 28 December 2009, aged 28. The findings pointed to accidental intoxication from a combination of prescription medication and alcohol, with an undiagnosed heart condition as a contributing factor. Nightmare (2010) was recorded over parts he had already written, with Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater performing them in the studio at the band's request.
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