M. Shadows was worried.
Avenged Sevenfold's frontman had envisioned Life Is but a Dream…, the long-awaited follow-up to 2016's The Stage, as the biggest and boldest thing his band had ever done, a boundary-pushing, listener-challenging statement that would grapple with some of the darkest, starkest truths of human existence. But after four years of writing and recording it, the album was feeling a little too comfortable and familiar.
"Things start to become normal after you live with 'em for a while," Shadows explains to Revolver. "And we'd been working on the record for so long that I remember asking Brian [A7X lead guitarist Synyster Gates], 'Hey, do you think we went far enough on this thing? Because it's feeling very normal to me now.' And, he's like, 'No, we did.'"
But Shadows remained unconvinced, at least until he received Andy Wallace's finished mixes of "G," "(O)rdinary" and "(D)eath," the genre-obliterating three-song suite that climaxes the album. "We wrote them as one song, but recorded them individually, so this was the first time we were actually able to put them together since the demo," he recalls. "I was kind of sleepy and lying there, listening to it with the volume down, and then all of a sudden I almost had a heart attack. I was like, 'OK, this is weird. This went from Steely Dan/Zappa to Stevie Wonder/Daft Punk to Wizard of Oz/Frank Sinatra real quick!' I'd never freaked myself out with my own music before. I called Brian and was like, 'Yeah, dude, we went far enough!'"
Ever since 2003's Waking the Fallen, the O.C. metal titans' second studio album (and first with Gates and bassist Johnny Christ), Avenged Sevenfold have repeatedly defied the expectations of fans and critics while pushing themselves to new heights of creativity and technical proficiency. But even a record as ambitious as The Stage — a sprawling, prog-metal concept album about mankind's relationship with science and technology — hasn't prepared the world for the mind-melting scope of Life Is but a Dream…
Their new 11-song opus, co-produced with Joe Barresi, is a truly wild ride where Pantera-esque groove metal collides with 100 gecs-style electropop, Daft Punk-ian vocoders, '70s funk and R&B, hip-hop production techniques, jagged bursts of jazz fusion, epic guitar-synth-scapes, cinematic orchestration, roiling emotions and witty verbal asides — and it's all capped by a four-and-a-half minute classically influenced piano solo.
And then there's the lyrical content of songs like "Nobody," "We Love You" and "Easier," which examine such weighty concepts as mortality, the destructive-ness of the ego, and what it means to be human in the age of artificial intelligence. Life Is but a Dream… is the kind of record that may take a dozen or more spins before everything sinks in, and Avenged Sevenfold are completely cool with that.
"We love this record unapologetically," says Gates. "This is music that I don't think I've ever heard before. These are melodies that give me goosebumps, chord changes that give me goosebumps, arrangements that give me goosebumps. It's not just, 'Oh, that's catchy,'" he laughs. "It's about, Does it make you misty-eyed? Does it jar you in the best way? And the answer to that question on this record is, Yes — yes, it does."
"I think the biggest compliment so far is people just not understanding it, and then by the tenth time they've heard it they're like, 'Wait — I think I like this!'" chuckles Brooks Wackerman, who joined Avenged Sevenfold in 2015 after drumming for nearly 15 years with L.A. punk icons Bad Religion. "Because all my favorite records were shocking at first, like, 'OK, this makes me feel uncomfortable, but why?'"
Countless albums released over the past few years have been delayed and shaped by the COVID-19 pandemic, and Life Is but a Dream… is no exception. But while the band was occasionally frustrated by slowdowns in the recording and mixing process (and by studio protocols that often kept them from being able to have as many people at the recording sessions as they'd have liked), the prevailing sentiment throughout the band is that an album this richly flavored required extra time in the oven. "Time was of the essence," says Gates, "but not in the sense that we needed to do some-thing quickly or expeditiously. Having all this time was essential to making this project happen."
Indeed, Avenged were already gearing up to take their music to uncharted realms well before the pandemic upended everyone's lives. "It was just time for us to explore new territories, new approaches and new techniques," Gates continues. "Nobody in the band wanted to plug into an amplifier, turn it way up and write regurgitated Avenged riffs, regurgitated Pantera riffs, regurgitated Metallica riffs. Those days are done for us, but it doesn't mean it can't be guitar-centric. This is actually the most guitar-centric record we've ever done — everything other than the orchestral stuff, even the synth stuff, is guitars."
"When we started writing this record, I was working on writing all sorts of guitar riffs and dueling guitars and sending 'em to Syn," says guitarist Zacky Vengeance. "But at the same time, I was also writing electronic music just for fun, playing around with different programs and stuff, and coming up with crazy shit that I was really proud of. And when Syn was like, 'More of that stuff, more crazy out-there shit,' I was like, 'Fuck yeah — OK, I see where we're headed!' I mean, we've done crazy before, but funky and robotic stuff was something we really never did. And that was really interesting and scary to me, which let me know that we were on the right path."
According to Shadows, the album's lyrical and conceptual reach was likewise already gestating when the band began writing in 2018. "I think it started with The Stage, which involved really studying up and learning a lot — this is kind of the curious nature of myself and of the band, and just wanting to really solidify your worldview. Like, where do we come from? Why are we here? What is time? What is the Big Bang? Where are we going? Artificial intelligence, what does it mean for consciousness? What does death mean? And does any of this really matter? All these big questions. And that road led me down the path of self-exploration, which led me to reading philosophy and being interested in the concepts of meaninglessness and absurdism."
"Matt [M. Shadows] and Brian just kind of ran with this one," says Johnny Christ. "We'd check in and help out, but it was also pretty clear that they had this vision, and it made sense to let them go work it out."
"They were definitely the ones on the wagon with the reins," adds Wackerman. "Matt and Brian have such a great understanding where they don't even have to talk much during the creative process, because they kind of share the same brain at times — but then other times, it's a healthy competition between those two. It's a great dynamic that they have, and very inspiring to be around. Just songwriting-wise, I've learned so much from those two."
Life Is but a Dream… was about halfway written when further inspiration entered the picture in the form of the psychedelic drug 5-MeO-DMT. "I had dabbled in psychedelics when I was younger," Shadows says. "I wanted to do it more as a medicine, and 5-MeO-DMT — toad venom — became really interesting to me as a way to see and explore." After doing considerable research on the subject, he and Gates engaged an experienced shaman to help guide them through a few days of 5-MeO-DMT trips in Gates' backyard.
"Psychedelics are not for everybody," Gates cautions. "You absolutely have to do a ton of research, because in some people it can trigger crazy setbacks and schizophrenic episodes. But you can't just push it aside; there are so many breakthroughs happening in psychedelic medicine right now, and so many people that are pursuing it for the betterment of all of our psyches."
For Shadows, the ego-destroying psychedelic voyage brought him a profound and brutal sense of clarity that took some time to fully wrap his head around. "The experience was the shift that I needed," he says. "But it also sent me into an existential crisis for about six to eight months, one that I wouldn't wish upon anyone. It was the deepest depression I've ever been in; I couldn't leave the house, couldn't go play sports, couldn't go to the gym, couldn't do anything."
All of which is a little surprising to hear, given that the Shadows speaking to Revolver seems absolutely radiant with joy and inner peace. But, as he explains, he needed to pass through that "dark night of the soul" in order to get to where he is now. "It was just pure ego destruction and rebuild. Because the meaninglessness and the bleakness of what this all is, you can take it two different ways: You can be bummed out about it, or you can take it as freedom, you know what I mean? Like, there is no purpose, there is no agenda, so find your own. And once you do that, you kind of see how much of a sham everything else is.
"Ego helps us all in this type of system that we've built," he continues. "You know, step on everyone's neck and get more and more and more. But once you realize that there is no purpose and there's no meaning except for what you assign to it, you start finding — and it took me six to eight months to do this — I started finding the joy of the little things, like just sitting with my kids, going to basketball practice, playing video games with my friends; like just doing all these things that were so mundane. Before, I just wanted to get out of those situations and go do the cool stuff; and then I realized that that's actually the cool stuff!
"And that's where the music comes in, because one of the main things I got out of that experience was, 'Express yourself fully and be bold.' These are the things I want to say; these are the stories I want to tell. It has to be done, and it has to be done bold. Going into that experience, there was already a willingness to 'play in the crazy.' But after that, it was like, 'We're putting the pedal down, and we're going to go as far as it takes!' Even though I thought we were bold before, it kind of opened up the floodgates."
Though Avenged Sevenfold's work ethic and desire to continually push towards new horizons are admittedly impressive, the most remarkable thing about the band may be how tight the members remain as they enter their forties. Most bands of their stature and sales figures, should they even manage to last this long, tend to splinter geographically — someone's living in Hawaii, someone else is in the Florida Keys, etc. — and only reunite when it's time to make a record or tour. Yet, Shadows, Gates, Christ and Vengeance all still live in the same corner of Orange County where they grew up together.
"We hang out all the time," says Christ. "Me and Zack and Brian and Matt, our houses are a 10-minute walk from each other. Our kids are all friends; they all get along. I know it'll sound cliché, but our family in Avenged Sevenfold comes before Avenged Sevenfold. Like, the band could end tomorrow, and we would still be best friends. After what we've been through together, what we've done, what we've accomplished, what we've failed at, there's nothing changing that bond."
Even Wackerman, who joined late in the game — replacing Arin Ilejay, who had stepped in (following a brief stint by Dream Theater's Mike Portnoy) after the accidental overdose death of original drummer Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan in 2009 — says he feels fully accepted as part of the A7X family. "They're just weirdly affable people, welcoming and down to earth," he laughs. "It kinda freaks me out just how nice my band is. It's the only band that I've been in where we will get off a touring cycle and they actually want to hang out with each other, and I want to hang out with them. I think it all comes from this mutual respect, where we're all still grateful for being musicians and being able to make a living doing this."
"I grew up with these dudes," says Gates. "We weren't making music at first. We were knocking over trash cans and getting expelled from school. We were just fucking asshole troublemakers that got so lucky. I mean, when you're a band of misfits, there are parts of your circle that are like the real-deal fucked up. And we've lost some people along the way — two of our best friends, the guy that drew the Deathbat [Micah Montague] and our drummer Jimmy, they couldn't get past it…
"I was just going through the motions at school," he continues. "What I needed was musical connection, which I found with Jimmy. I needed having the best time in the world as a kid, which I found with Matt and Johnny. And I needed some good camaraderie, which I found with Zack, to interpret the world and how everything's working. We knew we were lucky to have that, so we never wanted to move away from each other. And obviously, I see Matt the most because we're married to twins, and we get together once a week for family dinners and all this stuff. So yeah, it's next level."
"We still get inspired just by getting into the same room together," says Vengeance. "We get excited by big ideas, and anyone can bring one to the table, which is why we've all been friends to begin with. We're not interested in riding our own past coattails to become a comfortable legacy act. I didn't start this band with Matt 25 years ago or whatever because I had any interest in it becoming a job. I got tattoos on my neck and jumped in a van, because that's where the excitement was. And that excitement doesn't end at 40.
"We know we're going to take a lot of shit for what we do," he says, "but we've always been about, 'Let's go bigger, let's go further, let's get more ridiculous!' And I couldn't imagine any other way of doing it."
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