It’s been over four years since Avenged Sevenfold released their most recent record, The Stage. Arguably the band’s best record since City Of Evil, it took the band in a newer, progressive direction that many fans didn’t see coming. Much has been made about when the band might follow it up, and with a new 2020 interview with Avenged Sevenfold’s M. Shadows, recently published by Kerrang!, we may finally have an answer to that question.
Considering The Stage was a big leap for the band as far as growing as musicians, it only makes sense that the band’s next album might go in another direction entirely. M. Shadows hinted at such when prodded by Kerrang!.
“Well, we’ve had strings on every record, but the [new] record sounds nothing like ‘The Stage‘ – it’s a completely new direction, and it sounds nothing like anything we’ve done. That’s all I’ll say about it: it’s over the top, and it’s very eclectic and wild! …We’ve been writing a record for a while, and most of it was already written. But then we kinda took a break on it, and then it would be like, ‘Hey, let’s get together two days this week,’ instead of five or six. It just started getting more casual. Then we recorded really casually, and – like I said – we’re still in the middle of it: we still have all these things that we can’t do. We’re still trying to get string sections together, and our mixer is older and I know that they don’t want him to travel right now because of COVID, so even if we got it done right now, we couldn’t get it mixed. So we’re just not worrying about it, you know? It’s like, ‘When we can, we can.’ But right now, we can’t (laughs).”
He also discussed why the band has taken their time recording the album, considering the uncertainty that lies ahead with COVID-19 still ravaging the USA:
“No-one wants to put out the record if we can’t tour it. The reality is – and no-one wants to hear this – in this day and age, rock’n’roll just takes too long to make: you know, it’s going to be a three-year record to make. And if we put that record out and then we’re locked down for another year, as much as people don’t want to believe this, they are not going to give a shit about a record that came out a year prior when it’s time to tour. And so if it’s going to take us two or three years to write a record, we’re not going to put it out if we can’t go play it live. We know the anticipation won’t be there when the tours come around. You see it every day – if you look at iTunes or Spotify and see how quickly it all turns over, it’s just weekly onto the next thing and onto the next thing again. If you just imagine putting out a record in August, and then you’re not touring until next August, people don’t want to hear this but they’re not going to care; they’re going to be like, ‘What’s next?’ Once the Gojira record, or the new Metallica record, or the new Megadeth record comes out, they’re not going to care about what came out the year prior. Our whole thing is: if it’s going to take us three years to do a record, we’re going to make sure we can play it live and people are going to be excited about it.”
M. Shadows also discussed the band losing thousands of social media followers in one fell swoop when he went on the record as saying “Black Lives Matter” in a recent op-ed:
“So many of my friends and even family members are of different races, and I see how they get treated, and I just had to say something. I got permission from the band and said, ‘You know, I’ve got to write this, guys.’ And they were totally cool with it. You want to put your stake in the ground and be on the right side of history, and to me it was like: ‘We should care about this because we’re all humans.’ And that’s why I really wanted to put that out there. I think we lost a massive amount of Instagram followers that day, which was pretty funny to see how crazy the world is, right? Just by saying ‘Black Lives Matter’ people will cancel you, and that’s hilarious. But I thought it was interesting, and it was good to be what I feel is on the right side of history.”
Avenged Sevenfold have had a history of switching things up, several times in fact. Their leap from 2003’s Waking The Fallen to 2005’s City Of Evil was a big one, launching them into a new stratosphere entirely. But it was the one that the band underwent from their Hail To The King album to 2016’s The Stage that set them up for what’s certainly another another highly-anticipated one now.
