AVENGED SEVENFOLD Postpones Fall 2025 Latin American Tour Due To M. SHADOWS's Vocal Injury: 'It Breaks My Heart I Have To Do This'

AVENGED SEVENFOLD has postponed its fall 2025 Latin American tour due to a vocal injury suffered by singer M. Shadows.

The band was scheduled to to kick off the tour on September 25 in Buenos Aires, Argentina but ended up calling off the trek after M. Shadows was diagnosed with vocal fold hematoma, a condition where a blood vessel in the vocal cord ruptures and leaks blood under the lining of the vocal cord.

On Friday, September 26, AVENGED SEVENFOLD released the following message via social media: "With a heavy heart, and regretfully, we have to announce that due to a specific condition called a vocal fold hematoma, we have made the necessary decision to push our tour to early next year. We promise to come back stronger than ever. Your tickets will still be valid for the rescheduled shows — new dates are on the way and will be announced next week. Thank you for your understanding, love, and support."

M. Shadows elaborated on the decision to postpone the AVENGED SEVENFOLD Latin American tour in a video message shared on the band's social media channels. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Hey, everyone. What's going on? [I've] got some discouraging news. "[We're] gonna have to postpone the Latin American tour. I got my voice in some sort of trouble. After [performing at the] Louder Than Life [festival], I got a little sick and I thought that my throat was feeling crummy from being sick. I came down to Argentina. I felt like it was probably the travel, the schedule, et cetera. Monday and Tuesday came. I slept a bunch. I didn't feel any difference. So we postponed Buenos Aires. The next day, got a bunch of sleep, woke up and I felt like something wasn't getting better. So I found a great doctor in Argentina, went and got my throat scoped. And I have a hematoma on my left vocal fold, which is the same injury I had in 2017. In 2017, though, I decided to keep singing through it. I took a bunch of pills and ended up resulting in surgery. So, basically, if I shut this down now, I'll have a couple weeks of voice rest and then a couple months of rehab and we'll be able to remake these dates to you. So I've gotta make the responsible decision here and shut this down.

"This will be the last time I'm talking for a couple weeks," he continued. "It breaks my heart I have to do this, but we're gonna be able to reschedule these dates for January. Apologies to everyone who's made plans, spent money. Hopefully this is early enough to make you able to make the proper plans and kind of change the dates to January. Apologies to the bands. All of them have flown down here already. Our crew, everyone's already down here. The equipment. A lot goes into this, but I have to make the responsible decision and there's just no way I can sing like this. And I don't want another surgery. So we're gonna take the responsible route here, shut it down for a couple months and… Just sorry this had to happen. It just sucks. I can't wait to see you guys in January. Sorry."

When AVENGED SEVENFOLD first announced the Latin American tour — which was slated to be the band's first visit to the continent in more than a decade — in March, the band said: "After 11+ years, we can't wait to return to Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Puerto Rico for a proper headline tour. We've missed our Latin American fans! A DAY TO REMEMBER, MR. BUNGLE, and Karen Dió will be joining us in Brazil, and Poppy and MR. BUNGLE will join us in Mexico. Tickets for all shows are on sale now. See you this fall!"

The affected shows are:

Sep. 28 - Movistar Arena - Buenos Aires, Argentina
Sep. 30 - Movistar Arena - Santiago, Chile
Oct. 02 - Pedreira Paulo Leminski - Curitiba, Brazil
Oct. 04 - Allianz Parque - Sao Paulo, Brazil
Oct. 08 - Movistar Arena - Bogota, Colombia
Oct. 11 - Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú - Mexico City, Mexico
Oct. 14 - Coliseo de Puerto Rico - San Juan, Puerto Rico

Back in 2018, M. Shadows's viral infection rendered him unable to sing and forced the cancelation of AVENGED SEVENFOLD's tour with PROPHETS OF RAGE and THREE DAYS GRACE.

M. Shadows previously underwent vocal cord surgery more than 20 years ago, prior to the recording of AVENGED SEVENFOLD's 2005 album "City Of Evil". He later said that "it took a couple of years" for him to get all the lost notes from his voice, explaining in a 2016 interview: "I went from just being a kid that dropped out of high school to go on Warped Tour and had no training at all. And then when you come off a surgery, you have a lot of doctor's orders, which is don't talk for a couple of months and then go see this vocal coach. And so once I saw the vocal coach, I realized all the things I was doing wrong. But, you know, about six years stuff after that, I was able to get all my old stuff back, but with a little bit of technique so it doesn't hurt when you sing; it's not supposed to hurt when you sing. So I learned a lot from him and I still use him to this day."