Avenged Sevenfold vocalist M Shadows says the release of 2016 album The Stage taught him a handful of important lessons.
The band launched the record without previous notice on October 27 that year, intending to make an artistic statement with the approach. As a result it sold significantly fewer copies than 2013’s Hail To The King – but Shadows argues that, over time, the pros have outweighed the cons.
“We continually do this – we do something a little too early,” he says. “We always want to be first to do things that excite us. So the positive is that we're always artistically satisfied; we’re getting to do things that get us up in the morning and really pump us up.”
He continues: “So here’s the things I learned. At the time – and it’s even worse now – the Internet moves fast. If there’s no long drawn-out campaign, it simply misses a large portion of people. Because if it doesn’t show up on your feed, and if it doesn't show up within that first week, people are on to something else.
“So what we didn’t plan for was that. We thought the record would just grow; we thought radio would get behind it. Radio said they want nothing to do with it ‘cause there’s no buildup, and, ‘We feel shafted by you guys. You didn’t let us know.’ The news cycle’s already turning over.”
Despite those negatives, he continues: “The positives are that it has significantly grown as lore within our catalog. If you liked The Stage in the beginning, you were on the outside. Now, if you don’t like The Stage, people don’t listen to your opinion – like, ‘You either haven’t listened or you don’t get it.’”
Shadows still believes A7X made “something really cool happen” with a challenging album that, on top of being launched secretly, confounded many fans’ expectations. “It’s dense, and when it clicks for people, that thing becomes like the crown jewel in the catalogue,” he says.
“The first song’s nine minutes. But once it clicks you’re, like, ‘Oh, this is my favorite one!’ It’s cool to have that in the catalog, especially since we survived it all. It’s not like the band’s doing worse because of that. It’s just a part of the lineage of the band – it’s a cool thing.“
