M. Shadows talks artistic freedom — and not giving a damn

M. Shadows, the singer of Avenged Sevenfold, talked on the experimental aspects of the band’s most recent album, “Life Is But A Dream,” in a recent interview with Rock Feed. It was written and recorded over four years, mixed by Andy Wallace in the Poconos, Pennsylvania, and produced by Joe Barresi and Avenged Sevenfold in Los Angeles. A deeply personal investigation into the meaning, purpose, and worth of human existence with the constant fear of death, the album is a voyage through an existential crisis. He was questioned about how worried he and his bandmates were about the reaction of “Life Is But A Dream” from fans.

Dave Farrell from Linkin Park — we were at dinner probably a year ago and we were talking about ‘Life Is But A Dream…’, and he said… We were in this really nice restaurant and there was a bunch of people around. And he says, ‘If you were to take your record right now, or any record that you love, and show it to everybody here, how much weight would you put behind any of these people’s opinions?’ And the answer’s zero. And so, at the end of the day, we’re not making art by committee,” he explained. “This isn’t art by committee. It’s not, like, everybody give us your ideas and we’re all gonna kind of morph the same thing. We have A.I. to do that now; you’re gonna be able to take your favorite records and A.I. can spit out something sort of like it. But you need artists and creatives to keep pushing the boundaries. Some things are gonna work, some things aren’t. But at the end of the day, even if something doesn’t work, it might spark in someone else, ‘Oh, that was bold. Where can I push limits a little more?’ And I think that’s how this whole space thrives. And so for me, I couldn’t care less about [other people’s opinions], but one rule I made myself a long time ago is I listen to the positivity equally to the negativity, meaning I don’t care about either. If a review is a 10 out 10, cool. It could be bought and paid for. Cool. It doesn’t matter. If it’s a zero out of 10, it also doesn’t matter. So I think that you can’t just walk around with all your good stuff and then ignore the bad. You have to kind of ignore them both, in my opinion.