Avenged Sevenfold’s Next Album is “Over-The-Top, Eclectic and Wild”
Avenged Sevenfold vocalist M. Shadows recently spoke to Kerrang! and provided a substantial update on the progress of the band’s next album, which will be their first since they surprise-released The Stage in 2016.
On the writing and recording the band are currently doing, Shadows revealed the majority of the material was written before the pandemic hit, but has been progressing slowly in the studio since:
“We’ve been writing a record for a while, and most of it was already written [before the coronavirus pandemic]. 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].”
Shadows stated unequivocally that the band won’t put a record out until they can properly tour behind it, saying:
“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.”
Shadows added of the new album’s musical direction:
“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’ll keep you apprised of any updates on new Avenged Sevenfold music, although it sounds like it’ll be a while before anything substantial arrives.
