AVENGED SEVENFOLD: Making Of 'The Stage'; Video Footage From 'Paradigm' Studio Sessions

Video footage from the studio sessions for "Paradigm", a new song from AVENGED SEVENFOLD, can be seen below. The track is taken from the band's latest album, "The Stage", which came out late last month. The group made the album available at midnight on October 27 with almost no promotion beforehand, save for the arrival of a new song one week earlier.

"The Stage" sold 16,000 copies in its second week of release. While this is an impressive number by metal standards, it is also a 78 percent dip from the previos week, when the LP shifted 76,000 units. The surprise release of the disc, which was announced the night it went on sale, earned the lowest sales of an AVENGED SEVENFOLD album in 11 years — less than half the tally of its previous two efforts.

Over the weekend, AVENGED SEVENFOLD singer M. Shadows took to Facebook to blast the media for labeling "The Stage" a commercial disappointment. In an interview he said, "We also take a longer-term view. The average album following a three-month release model typically sees sales drop as much as 80 percent for the second week. We expect some drop-off, too… but we also expect our album sales to continue over a longer period of time."

For comparison's sake, AVENGED SEVENFOLD's previous album, 2013's "Hail To The King" sold 42,000 in week two, which was a 74-percent drop from its first-week sales of 159,000.

"The Stage" is a 71-minute, 11-song concept album centered around the theme of artificial intelligence and inspired by the work of Carl Sagan and Elon Musk. Instead of a science fiction storyline, however, "The Stage" takes what a press statement called "a futurist's look at the accelerated rate at which technology's intelligence is expanding and what that means — good and bad — for the future."

The album's epic 15-minute-plus closing track, "Exist", features a guest appearance by award-winning astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, giving a spoken-word performance he penned specifically for the album.

The marketing plan and launch of the album, the band's first for Capitol Records, was months in the making, starting with the projection of the band's logo, the Deathbat, on buildings in cities around the world. The campaign even included some misdirection, as the group had its friend Chris Jericho "accidentally" leak a fake album title and release date.