M. Shadows of the Huntington Beach, California band Avenged Sevenfold has some hang-ups when it comes to the use of technology in modern music production. For example, the frontman recently expressed his belief that “technology overuse” is responsible for “killing metal and rock.”
Ironically, almost an exact year ago, Shadows shared on Twitter that he believes “pop production” is responsible for the “downfall” of metal.
Shadows’ more recent comments about technology came up during a new chat with The Ex Man. During that conversation, the frontman talked about some of the modern tech the band used to create their newest album, Life Is But a Dream…. It’s while talking about the new Avenged Sevenfold album though that Shadows brings up his issues with technology regarding modern metal and rock production.
Regarding his belief that “technology overuse is killing metal and rock,” Shadows says (as transcribed by Metal Hammer):
“There’s a lot of vocoder and things we’re doing on this record. But we’re not using ProTools vocoder, right? We brought out the keyboards, we’re singing into stuff, we’re talking [through] the talk box…but I think as you do that stuff and you do all those new, forward-thinking things in an organic way, I think it just has a knack to it that’s very cool.
“One thing that I think, and I’ve said this on Twitter and you get ‘Old man yelling at the clouds’, I think technology overuse is killing metal and killing rock. Everyone’s using the same samples, they’re using the same tools to fill out the speakers, they’re brickwalling their mixes, the vocals pop and it’s way on top…the normal person that listens to that, they’re like, ‘This just sounds like one straight line of something, but it’s not appealing to me because there’s no dynamic, there’s no this or that, it all sounds the same.’ I think that’s why bands like Tool, bands like System, they really stand out because there’s so much dynamic, there’s so much realness happening.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, Shadows goes on to mention his belief that, if you were to use such technological techniques to mess around with a song like “Master of Puppets,” you’d lose something in the song. Per the frontman:
“I think there’s a reason why rock has a hard time translating. Some of these songs…I think, like, what would Master Of Puppets sound like if the drums were quantized, everything was filled out on the speakers, everything was perfectly tuned…it just wouldn’t have that same thing that it makes you feel.”
Do you agree with M. Shadows’ points regarding “technology overuse”? Do you think an overreliance on technology is “killing” metal and rock?