Avenged Sevenfold has returned after seven years with their new album ‘Life Is But A Dream’, which has divided the band’s fanbase. This experimental album was a bold move by Avenged Sevenfold, coming back after such a long time with a record so different from anything they had ever done before.
Zacky Vengeance, the guitarist of A7X, explained in an interview with Blackcraft why no member of the band wanted an ordinary metal album. Zacky said: “Having the time off gave us a chance to look at ourselves and really reflect. You get to that point in life when your life changes. We have families now, we have obligations, and the easy road is make the next Hail To The King album or do Nightmare Part Two, go package up with the same bands you’ve always played with, sell the same amount of tickets, get a paycheck, and you’ll be comfortable. And that just never really sat well with any of us. And it wasn’t like an internal discussion, like, ‘Hey, what are we gonna do to reinvent ourselves?’ I didn’t fucking care. It was, ‘What are we gonna do to not want to not do this?’ Because I never wanna feel like I’m phoning it in. And I never wanna feel like I’m just putting on the heavy metal vest and trying to grow my hair and trying to fit in, in hopes of being the next Metallica.
He continued: “It just doesn’t feel right. We didn’t start the band to do that. We wanted to be insane. We wanted to dress crazy. We wanted to write crazy music. And I think we all collectively, at the same moment, realized you either have to go all in on what you love and be completely fearless, which is what we’ve always lived and died by, and if you try and get pulled into the realm of playing it safe, which so many people do, because it’s easy to do when you have mouths to feed, and go up there and just go through the motions, that’s career suicide. And we collectively just said, ‘Let’s have fun with this. No matter, do what we want to do. Bounce off each other’s ideas, and let’s be happy as a band, the five of us. And if anybody else likes it, great. If they don’t, fuck it. At least we went down with the ship the way that we should.'”