The Rev's Biography

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The Rev was born February 9, 1981 in Huntington Beach, California and he died December 28, 2009 at the same city he was born, his real name is James Owen Sullivan , he's the past drummer, songwriter and a former member of Avenged Sevenfold.

 The Rev grewp up and lived in Orange County, CA he had a drum kit at the age of ten and he started playing with bands in high school satrting with Suburban Legends from 1998 to 1999 and then he formed Avenged Sevenfold along with M.Shadows and Zacky Vengeance.

He was a lead vocalist and pianist in a side project called Pinkly Smooth with his childhood friend Synyster Gates .

His influences drummers included Frank Zappa, King Crimson, Vinnie Paul, Mike Portnoy, Dave Lombardo, Lars Ulrich, and Terry Bozzio.

In 28/12/2009 The Rev was found dead in his appartement at Huntington Beach, The police said that his death appeared to be from natural causes.

An autopsy performed on December 30, 2009 was inconclusive, but toxicology results revealed to the public in June that he died from an overdose of Oxycodone (Percocet), oxymorphone (a metabolite of oxycodone), diazepam (Valium), nordiazepam (a metabolite of diazepam) and alcohol. The coroner noted cardiomegaly (enlarged heart) as a "significant condition" that may have played a role in Sullivan's death.


Two weeks after his death the band's member decied to dedicated the album Nightmare (that was realesed in 2010) to him with some songs like "So Far Away", which had been written by his band mate (and childhood friend) Synyster Gates, and "Fiction", which The Rev wrote three days before his death, and about this song M.Shadows and Synyster Gates said to Hard Drive Radio:

[...]The eeriest thing about it is there is a song on the album called "Fiction" (a nickname The Rev gave himself) which started out with the title "Death". And it was the last song The Rev wrote for the album, and when he handed it in, he said, 'That's it, that's the last song for this record'. And then, three days later, he died."

After the death of The Rev the rest of the members asked Mike Portnoy to help them to finish the album Nightmare, he did that and he also played with him live for many shows. Mike was just a temporary member so he leaved the band ,and after that the members decided to search for a new drummer and they chose Arin Ilejay as the official drummer of the band now.

In 2010 The Rev won the Golden God Awards: Best Drummer for his work on Nightmare album, but of course he was dead at that time so the award was given to his family and bandmates.

*Go back to the band's biography here !
* The informations above was taken from Wikipedia