Aaron Comess Tackles Avenged Sevenfold’s “Afterlife” in Drumeo’s ‘For the First Time’ Series

Drumeo’s “For the First Time” series sets up a simple proposition: a drummer faces a drumless track they’ve never heard, with no prior reference, and has to build an arrangement in real time. Recent episodes have drawn a mix of session players and band drummers, but the latest entry puts Spin Doctors’ Aaron Comess in that seat with Avenged Sevenfold’s “Afterlife.”

Comess listened once, charted the song structure quickly, then played the track in a single take. His version leans away from the double‑bass patterns that Jimmy “The Rev” Sullivan wrote for the original, replacing them with backbeat‑driven grooves that sit closer to rock pocket playing than metal’s rhythmic density. The result doesn’t replicate Sullivan’s parts note for note, but it tracks the song’s momentum closely enough to feel like an instinctive, parallel reading rather than a forced translation.

The exercise reveals less about genre barriers and more about how a skilled listener can absorb a song’s underlying shape. Comess’s on‑the‑spot decisions—eschewing busy fills, keeping the backbeat heavy—don’t dilute the track; they clarify where the two drummers’