Within the age of streaming algorithms and generative AI, artists are more and more confronted with the problem of staying true to their inventive instincts whereas navigating public expectations. For Avenged Sevenfold, that pressure is entrance and middle of their most up-to-date and polarizing launch, Life Is However A Dream…
The album, which took 4 years to craft, represents a deep dive into the human situation. Produced by Joe Barresi alongside the band and blended by Andy Wallace within the Poconos, Life Is However A Dream… is something however standard. It is an existential odyssey, exploring themes of mortality, objective, and the worth of existence—topics far faraway from the safer floor many rock bands tread.
In a brand new interview with Rock Feed, frontman M. Shadows defined that the band by no means approached this file with fan approval in thoughts. As an alternative, they embraced a riskier, extra introspective path.
“Dave Farrell from Linkin Park — we had been at dinner in all probability a yr in the past and we had been speaking about Life Is However A Dream…, and he mentioned… We had been on this very nice restaurant, and there was a bunch of individuals round. And he says, ‘In the event you had been to take your file proper now, or any file that you simply love, and present it to all people right here, how a lot weight would you place behind any of those individuals’s opinions?’ And the answer is zero,” M. Shadows mentioned (by way of Blabbermouth)
That anecdote set the tone for Shadows’ broader philosophy on suggestions—one which favors boldness over consensus.
“And so, on the finish of the day, we’re not making artwork by committee,” he defined. “This is not artwork by committee. It is not, like, all people give us your concepts and we’re all gonna type of morph the identical factor. We have now A.I. to try this now; you are gonna have the ability to take your favourite information, and A.I. can spit out one thing kind of prefer it. However you want artists and creatives to maintain pushing the boundaries. Some issues are gonna work, some issues aren’t. However on the finish of the day, even when one thing would not work, it’d spark in another person, ‘Oh, that was daring. The place can I push limits a little bit extra?’ And I believe that is how this entire house thrives.”
In a panorama the place instantaneous reactions and scorching takes typically dominate, M. Shadows has made peace with letting all of it go — good and unhealthy.
“So for me, I could not care much less about different individuals’s opinions, however one rule I made myself a very long time in the past is I hearken to the positivity equally to the negativity, which means I do not care about both. If a overview is a ten out of 10, cool. It might be purchased and paid for. Cool. It would not matter. If it is a zero out of 10, it additionally would not matter. So I believe that you may’t simply stroll round with all of your great things after which ignore the unhealthy. You must type of ignore them each, for my part.”
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