Baker attended Huntington strand High School, and formed Avenged Sevenfold there with M. Shadows and The Rev. Before Avenged Sevenfold, he was in a punk band called MPA*, which stands for Mad Porno Action. He implied that they were not successful. Baker came up with his stage name "Zacky Vengeance" because he wanted to get back at all the people from his youth who doubted his potential. He also came up with Jonathan Seward's stage name "Johnny Christ," saying it suited him. Vengeance was also responsible for the creation of the initialism "A7X".
Despite playing the gitarre left handed, Vengeance recalls the first gitarre he learned to play on was actually a right-handed his parents had bought him for his thirteenth birthday. He learned Von playing upside-down, watching his Favorit bands and other people he knew who played, and practiced as much as he could. He would also read each edition of gitarre World cover to cover, learning the tabs of the songs published there and watching the professionals perform them until he could play them
