M. SHADOWS On AVENGED SEVENFOLD's Success: 'We're Extremely Lucky'

In a new interview with São Paulo, Brazil's 89 FM A Rádio Rock radio station, AVENGED SEVENFOLD frontman M. Shadows spoke about the making of the band's latest album, "Life Is But A Dream…" Written and recorded over the span of four years, it was produced by Joe Barresi and AVENGED SEVENFOLD in Los Angeles and mixed by Andy Wallace in the Poconos, Pennsylvania. The album is a journey through an existential crisis; a very personal exploration into the meaning, purpose and value of human existence with the anxiety of death always looming.

M. Shadows, whose real name is Matt Sanders, said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "The production, in terms of the album, we just grind on writing. And we had a narrative that we wanted to attack. The narrative was simply that life is quick and life is what you make it. And as cliché as that sounds, at the end of the day, there are no rules and you can kind of create your own purpose with your own life. And as soon as you realize that, the world opens up in a lot of ways. And so the album's narrative was directly influencing the actual music that was made, which is a lot of left turns, a lot of stop-and-go, a lot of unique styles. So it turned out to be a very avant garde record, which I would argue that life is very avant garde, if you kind of look at it from 30,000 feet. So I just think the production on it was wild, it was fun, it was exciting. And the band gets in there and we grind it out. And we try to make sure what we're trying to say gets articulated well through the music."

Regarding AVENGED SEVENFOLD's rise from playing small clubs to headlining arenas and festivals around the world, M. Shadows said: "It feels like a dream, but there's always a North Star of never having become a victim to audience capture, always writing the records you wanna write and understanding that in the long run, if you are true to yourself and true to the music and true to your sort of North Star, which is you, then things will work out. Now, listen, people do that all the time and it doesn't work out for them. We're extremely grateful. We're extremely lucky. We're extremely lucky that we came up in a scene of California where there was a lot of bands that had built an audience already. We're close to L.A., where there's a lot of record label folks. We were able to get a kickstart in a way that a lot of people can't get. And we were extremely lucky to grow up together with someone that played guitar and someone that played drums and someone that wanted to write songs and sing. And so there's so much luck that gets involved. And so I look back on it and I just go… I mean, [I'm] just extremely grateful."

AVENGED SEVENFOLD launched the 2024 leg of the "Life Is But A Dream…" North American tour on March 6 at KeyBank Center in Buffalo, New York. The band's 2024 run included AVENGED SEVENFOLD's first-ever performances in Manchester, New Hampshire; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Newark. The group performed in Des Moines, Iowa for the first time in 18 years; Cleveland, Ohio; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for the first time in 15 years.

AVENGED SEVENFOLD has been touring in support of its latest album, "Life Is But A Dream…", which sold 36,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in its first week of release to land at position No. 13 on the Billboard 200 chart.

AVENGED SEVENFOLD made its first festival appearance in five years on May 19, 2023 at Welcome To Rockville at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida.

AVENGED SEVENFOLD's first concert since June 2018 took place on May 12, 2023 at AREA15 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

To date, AVENGED SEVENFOLD has sold over 10 million albums worldwide and earned two consecutive No. 1 albums on Billboard's Top 200 Albums chart (2010's "Nightmare" and 2013's "Hail To The King") to go along with over a billion video views and a billion-plus Spotify streams, as well as multiple No. 1 singles on rock radio.