Songfacts®:

• This was Avenged Sevenfold's first release since 2011's "Not Ready To Die," which was recorded in April of 2011 for the Call of Duty: Black Ops expansion 'Call of the Dead.' "Carry On" was featured on the end credits of that game's sequel Call of Duty: Black Ops II.
• Speaking with Artist Direct's Rick Florino, vocalist M. Shadows told the story behind the song: "Well, it came together by listening to way too much Ozzy's Boneyard on SiriusXM Radio," he said. [Laughs]. "They play a lot of classic metal and thrash on there. It's everything from Judas Priest and Iron Maiden to Helloween and Rush. There's all sorts of fun stuff. When we got called about this song, we basically had three days to write it, a couple of days to record it, and we had to be in there doing motion capture. We were like, 'Let's do something that's a bit of a throwback.' It's a little more compact as a song. They needed it to be under four minutes because of animation. We wanted to make a song that punched you in the gut and left you there. We made an up-tempo song with some chord modulations and fun chorus tricks. We had a great time doing it. We wanted to make an uplifting song that was fun and entertaining at the end of the game. I think it came out really well."
• Regarding the song's lyrics, M. Shadows said he "wanted to be more vague." "Sometimes, I feel like my lyrics meander a little bit," he explained, "and our songs are so big I need to write more words than are necessary. I wanted to leave these lyrics more open-ended. I felt that the term 'Carry On' was perfect not only for the characters but for Avenged Sevenfold moving forward. I stuck with that. I just wanted to write some epic lyrics you could think about when you were driving down the street or on your horse [Laughs]. It's a classic, vast, up-tempo metal song. 'Carry On' worked with that."
• We see the band in pixelated form performing the song during the game's end credits. Kerrang! asked M. Shadows what it was like performing all the motion capture stuff? He replied: "It was a lot of fun. But like anything, when you get down to the work involved in it, it's pretty painstaking. Things like pretending you're screaming, but you're not allowed to move your head too much, takes some getting used to. And we had to perform parts of the song over and over again. That stuff wasn't so much fun, but when you see how it's all put together and how cool the end result comes out, it's definitely all worth it."