Avenged Sevenfold have just released a brand new song for the first time in over two years. The modern metal heavyweights surprised-released the track, titled Magic, this afternoon (Friday December 5) in collaboration with the Call Of Duty gaming franchise, whom the band have worked with numerous times over the years.
Released as a special tie-in with Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7 Season 1, the song - a weird, woozy and autotune-powered metal banger - comes accompanied by a VR 360° video set inside the world of Call Of Duty that uses the Unreal Engine software to pretty dazzling effect.
Watch the video for Magic below.
Magic serves as the first piece of new Avenged Sevenfold material since the release of eighth studio album Life Is But A Dream... in June 2023, and seemingly continues that album's fondness for wild experimentation.
Life Is But A Dream... was extremely divisive with fans, with many appalled by the band's dive into off-the-wall dabbles with prog, jazz, funk and pop, and others blown away by the Orange County crew's boldness and vision (including this writer, who gave the record a 9/10 for Classic Rock that I absolutely stand by - Life Is But A Dream... still slaps hard!).
Speaking to Metal Hammer that year, Avenged acknowledged that their new material would bemuse plenty of people, seemingly buoyed by the fact.
“They’re like, ‘That is fucking shit! These guys forgot how to write a song! Why would you put a solo at the end?’” remarked frontman M. Shadows. “We were just laughing. That was more fun to us than someone saying, ‘Oh, this is great.’ We always gear towards a little bit of ruffling feathers.”
Ruffle feathers it certainly did, but it also wowed many critics. Reviewing for Metal Hammer, Dave Everley wrote of the album:
"Yes, Life Is But A Dream… is indulgent. Of course it is. A lot of people won’t want to come along for the ride, and how this stuff is going to fit alongside their older material live is anyone’s guess. But Avenged Sevenfold have scaled the mountain and looked out over all that surrounds them, then plunged headfirst into the void, not knowing where, when or even if they’ll land. What kind of madness is this? The very best kind."
(See! It wasn't just me!)
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