AVENGED SEVENFOLD's M. SHADOWS: 'I Think METALLICA Have Aged Really Well'

In a new interview with U.K.'s Kerrang! magazine, AVENGED SEVENFOLD singer M. Shadows briefly touched upon his band's former tourmates METALLICA. He said: "I think METALLICA have aged really well. I think they look like dudes who are out there doing what they want to do. Maybe a few years ago it looked a little bit more…" — a careful pause — "…forced, but they were going through growing pains. But now you see them and it's James [Hetfield, METALLICA frontman] smoking a cigar before he goes onstage. Lars [Ulrich, METALLICA drummer] is Lars. They're not trying to fill up their faces with Botox. They're just guys who are aging dudes who are playing thrash. I think there's something really human and cool about that."

Back in April 2023, M. Shadows, whose real name is Matt Sanders, reflected on his band's experience of sharing the stage with METALLICA on an entire U.S. tour seven years ago. He told Jason Bailey of Audacy Check In: "Well, that was definitely a little more uncomfortable, because you're not in your setting and you're in the daylight and you don't have your toys with you and you're playing a quick set. And you're the opening band. So it's a different thing. Because when you're headlining, everybody's in the palm of your hand before it even happens. When you're opening for METALLICA and the place is sort of like slowly filling up, half the venue's full, you're in the daylight getting hit by the sun, so you almost have to go to war. You might have some people in the pit that are into this, but there's a lot of skeptical arms crossed, like, 'I don't like these new bands. I don't want anything to do with this. I'm waiting for the real metal gods to show up.' And so it's really a lot more feeling like you're going to war."

Shadows also explained why he and his AVENGED SEVENFOLD bandmates initially turned down the opportunity to open for METALLICA before finally agreeing to support the San Francisco Bay Area metal legends on their 2017 "WorldWired" tour.

"We have only headlined for so long," he said. "And one of the things that we heard early in our career, and one thing we respected immensely about certain bands, is if you headline, people think of you as a headliner, and if you go and open for people constantly, they'll always think of you as second fiddle. So the idea of opening and taking all the toys away, everything everyone had ever seen — my question to [METALLICA drummer Lars Ulrich] was, 'I don't think this is the right look for new people getting into AVENGED SEVENFOLD. This isn't where we're at.' But to a lot of mainstream people, it was, 'Oh, you're the band that opened for METALLICA,' which put us on a higher pedestal, which was weird to me. And so the conversation just went, 'We're not gonna do that.' Then they would call [our agent] and offer more money, and we were, like, 'We're not gonna do that.' Then it eventually became, like, 'Okay, we're gonna do that because we'd be idiots not to.' But I still walked away from that tour extremely grateful but extremely, I think, right about taking that tour. It did put us in that weird position of, 'You're second fiddle to this.'"

Almost seven years ago, M. Shadows said that the majority of the people who came to see METALLICA during the two bands' joint summer 2017 stadium tour were "casual fans" who only had a copy of the San Francisco heavy metal legends' multi-platinum 1991 album.

METALLICA's first North American trek in eight years, which was seen by hundreds of thousands people, was also the band's first stadium run in almost two decades. It kicked off in May 2017 in Baltimore at M&T Bank Stadium.

During an October 2017 event at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, Shadows and his bandmates spoke about the experience of supporting METALLICA on that year's tour. The singer said: "What you learn is that all the complaining and all the [negativity] online, or in this world, when you actually go to a stadium show, to sell out stadiums, it's required that you have The Black Album. You can play deep cuts all you want — you can play 'Master Of Puppets', this and that, but when they're playing The Black Album songs, every single person there is going crazy. And it's like sixty percent of their audience are casual fans that only have The Black Album, and that's one thing that's never gets reflected by their hardcore fans."

He continued: "To go do stadiums, you have to have a record that's worked at radio, or crossed over at some point into the consciousness of the human collective, and they had that with The Black Album. As much as we heard this and that, people complaining that they want deeper cuts from them — which I get — but when they play The Black Album, they play 'Sad But True', 'Enter Sandman', 'Unforgiven', it's just a different vibe, and you can tell that a lot of their audience are casual fans, which is something they've done and nurtured really well throughout their career.

"A lot of the metal bands that were around when METALLICA put out The Black Album, now they're playing clubs, and METALLICA is playing stadiums," he added.

AVENGED SEVENFOLD's latest album "Life Is But A Dream…", arrived in June 2023 via Warner.