His vocal range spans nearly four octaves, whilst the beginning at the lowest note is D 2, and reaching up to A 5 - Shadows' highest recorded note to date. Shadows possesses a baritone voice, which shows in his vocal weight, able to sing comfortably in the tenor range, carrying his baritone timbre up to high C on a regular basis, but also when he sings low with a resonant sound. Shadows performing at the Nova Rock Festival in June 2014 Shadows also mentioned in another interview their reasoning behind choosing stage names also came from their intention to "piss people off". Slash of Guns N' Roses, Munky of Korn and the members of Slipknot). He also added that he and the band took stage names because many other successful musicians that they were influenced by had them (e.g. The 'M' is in place of his first name, Matthew, which he did not want to be in his stage name because of the way it sounded. In an interview, Shadows says that he chose his stage name because he thought of himself as "the darker character in the group".
Shadows, like the other members of Avenged Sevenfold, uses a stage name. Following this, Shadows formed Avenged Sevenfold in 1999 along with middle school friends Zacky Vengeance, The Rev, and Matt Wendt. He attended Huntington Beach High School, where he played for a brief stint in a punk band named "Successful Failure". He links his early musical experience with the piano as a major factor in developing his skills with the guitar and his voice. His interest in rock was from listening to bands like Guns N' Roses earlier in life after his father gave him his first cassette, and his interest in heavy metal music grew as he became older and began to play the guitar. Shadows was born on Jin Fountain Valley, California and raised in Huntington Beach, California.