Avenged Sevenfold had kept fairly quiet following Machine Head frontman Rob Flynn’s criticism that their new album Hail to the King  is basically a roundup of cover songs. But singer M. Shadows has now addressed the comments. In an interview with Canadian radio station 106.9 The Bear, he said:

“I have no ill will towards those guys. I’ve met Phil (Machine Head guitarist) a couple of times; he’s cool. Robb is cool. And I think the guy has the right to go make… if it’s really a joke, in his mind… Some people might see it as being as an underhanded… joke. But, to me, if he just wants to go in there and write whatever he wants, I think that’s totally cool. Everyone has an opinion and everyone should be entitled to say whatever they want. So it’s no skin off our backs.”

In fact, he all but admitted to the “inspiration” the band drew from Metallica, drawing connection to “Sad But True,” a song Flynn specifically called Avenged out on.

“I really don’t know what to say about it other than I agree with him on the ‘Sad But True’ thing — that was obviously an inspiration for that song. Everything else, I kind of think he… If it is a joke, it was kind of overboard, ’cause it doesn’t make sense in my mind. But at the same time, he was saying it was a joke, so…

But all in all, the Avenged singer claims he saw the statements as a joke. In fact, he told the Canadian D.J. that he didn’t know about the specific comments from Flynn until WWE wrestler (and Fozzy frontman) Chris Jericho brought them to his attention. Whether or not there is validity to this response, it still leads us to wonder if we can expect a cage match between Shadows and Flynn in the future. But with Avenged Sevenfold’s album sales being what they are, we are thinking the marketing mavericks behind Hail to the King probably aren’t pining for ways to promote the new material.