Avenged Sevenfold: new album is “very influenced by Kanye West”

Avenged Sevenfold vocalist M. Shadows recently revealed the band has plans on getting their new record done this January. Now in an interview with Metal Hammer, Shadows clarified that the new record has been recorded for about a year and that the only holdup is flying to Prague to record strings. Shadows added that Avenged Sevenfold plans to finish the album in February and begin mixing in March.

Shadows also revealed that the new record is “very influenced by Kanye West,” in that he pulls from great artists that Avenged Sevenfold isn’t normally influenced by.

There are so many influences… We’re very influenced by Kanye West. The thing about Kanye is that he is pulling from such great soul music. I didn’t grow up with that stuff — my dad listened to Boston and Alice Cooper [and] I didn’t get that taste of black music and old soul. So, diving deep into jazz musicians… We’re not trying to do a jazz record, but the chord changes and progressions are so eye-opening to us.

M. Shadows to Metal Hammer magazine

Shadows previously mentioned that Avenged Sevenfold would like to begin touring on the new album this October 2022, preferably at the Aftershock festival.

It’s just that we have to be very careful about getting everything going, building a whole new stage set, hiring everybody, renting buses and then having one person get sick and the tour gets canceled and we get to be on the hook for everything. And it’s not that we don’t wanna do it.

People compare us to bands that are going and playing clubs. It’s not the same thing. Getting an arena tour going and playing these festivals, it’s just not the same thing. And also we wanna be mentally ready.

These are all gonna sound like crazy excuses, but these are real. We have a huge stage that we wanna get built. We can’t get people to work. We can’t get the supplies we need to build it, which there’s a supply chain problem as well. Go look at the Long Beach, at the port right now, and these boats are just stuck out there. And so we have all these things going on where we’re not gonna come back on stage and have the stage from The Stage record and then just go, ‘Well, same show four years later. Sorry, guys. The record’s not done ’cause we couldn’t finish it.’

So, I would just say starting in January, we are gonna put our nose to the grind and we are gonna finish this record. And then we’re doing a couple of shows in Europe. And then I would love to — and I don’t wanna step on Danny Wimmer’s toes here — but I would love to start at Aftershock and then book a tour out from there.

So, we’re gonna be doing stuff. But, yeah, it’s just kind of making sure we’re mentally there and we put our best foot forward when we do come out and make sure that it’s all good.M. Shadows to Metal Hammer magazine