Avenged Sevenfold’s M. Shadows: New Record Is 70% Done

Alfred Nitsch, CC BY-SA 3.0 AT , via Wikimedia Commons
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It’s been a hot second since we heard anything from the Avenged Sevenfold camp; most of the news has just been frontman M. Shadows doing guest vocals on other projects. Now, though, the singer has given an update on the follow-up to the band’s 2016 album The Stage.

In an interview with Minneapolis/St. Paul’s 93X (via Blabbermouth), the singer explained, “We’re working on stuff. We have pretty much 70 percent of the record done. We have some things we can’t finish right now ’cause of COVID — string players, et cetera. We know Andy [Wallace, the band’s longtime mixer] doesn’t wanna travel, or his management doesn’t want him to travel because of COVID. So there’s just a lot of things going on.”

“It doesn’t make sense for us right now to put out a record and not be able to tour it,” said Shadows, when asked when exactly fans can expect the new LP. “The world has changed. Putting out a record on Spotify without touring for a rock band, it just doesn’t make sense to us. So we’re gonna wait till everything is back, then we’ll come out with the record, finish it up, and all will be good.”

Check out the full interview below:

Shadows’ stance isn’t an uncommon one in the post-COVID world. While some bands have chosen to release records despite the inability to tour for them, they acknowledge that the decision was made for the fans’ sake, even if it wasn’t financially profitable.

“You don’t want to put an album out and then you can’t promote it — it’s cool to have songs out there, but at the end of the day, this is still a business,” Hatebreed guitarist Wayne Iozinak recently told The Pit. “The record company’s gotta make some money off of it, or what’s the point? Finally, we came to the decision that hopefully we’ll be touring next year. And we’ll be giving the fans something — we’ve got merch bundles, signed albums, posters. So at least that gives you something until live shows can come back.”

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Words by Chris Krovatin