One of its generation’s most celebrated musical groups, Avenged Sevenfold (A7X) has risen to heavy metal fame since its inception in 1999. The band remains world-renowned for its showmanship, eclectic musical directions, conceptual themes, and experimentation with novel approaches to music and artistry.
This has led to widespread acclaim across their 24-year career, with five of the band’s eight albums reaching RIAA-certified Platinum status. The group has also ranked on Loudwire’s Top 50 Metal Bands of All Time.
Founded in Huntington Beach, California, the band currently consists of lead vocalist M Shadows, lead guitarist Synyster Gates, rhythm guitarist Zacky Vengeance, bass guitarist Johnny Chris, and Drummer Brooks Wackerman.
XR Today is honoured to interview M Shadows (Matthew Charles Sanders), frontman and lead vocalist of Avenged Sevenfold. Ultimate Guitar has voted him third place in its Top 25 Greatest Modern Frontmen list.
In our discussion, we explore the incorporation of Web3 and immersive technologies in the band’s latest album ‘Life Is But A Dream‘ and its work with 3D Artist Ryan McKinnon for the hit song ‘We Love You.’
- Kindly visit here for the full interview with Ryan McKinnon
We also cover audience reactions to the group’s performances at Las Vegas’ premier extended reality (XR) event venue, AREA15, and several central themes to the band’s latest direction, sound, and outlook.
XR Today: Change is one of the core elements of A7X, namely as its sound, lineup, and creative directions have undergone significant shifts over its musical career. Do you believe immersive media will become a mainstay of this?
M Shadows: We’re always looking for new ways to push things forward that interest us. These are things like Web3, where we’ve seen huge benefits to our fans and keep a ‘connective tissue’ as a band to them with rewards.
We like to explore emerging technologies like virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR), and where they’re going. All of these things are really cool ways to push things forward. We also explore artificial intelligence (AI), using it to prompt things.
Our interests take us in so many different directions, and we don’t want the band to ever get stuck in one specific era. We like to play around with [emerging] technologies and see where they take us. It’s just very interesting to us, and we want to bring new things to our audience.
Technology has always been a really great tool to do those sorts of things. We’ll always push it forward until the day it doesn’t interest us anymore. I don’t see that happening anytime soon, especially as so many exciting things are taking place.
XR Today: What kind of vision did A7X want to capture with your most recent video, ‘We Love You’? How did the band work with Ryan McKinnon to realise it for your audiences?
M Shadows: I want to give a lot of credit to Ryan on this one. You know, I started talking to him about doing a video, and I knew he was doing some stuff with Unreal Engine.
We got on a phone call, and he said he had some ideas of what he wanted to do, so I let him run with it. I sent him the lyrics and the song, and he went with them in this direction.
I think that one of the themes the song really explores is that, we’re promised everything in life by everyone around us, but that’s not really the reality.
Instead, we get thrown instantly into the grind. We hold these things high in society, and this is what we consider successful: work, work, work. No time for any moment to sit back and enjoy life, but rather, it’s all about, “What’s next?”
One thing I’ve realized about human nature is that, once there’s a new technology or place to go, we push full force into it. Even though half of the population probably wants to stop all things [related to] technology, we always push forward as a human race.
We keep building and building and wanting more and more. As we do that, we don’t know where we will find ourselves in the future, which will always be a question mark. I think the video captures that perfectly.
XR Today: How engaged were your audiences during the immersive performance at AREA15? How did they respond to the new visuals, and how did you bring them to the stage?
M Shadows: I think the audience was really engaged at AREA15. Whenever you’re showing them something new, there’s always this wonderment and, sometimes, a moment to stop and reflect on what they’re seeing and taking in. Our job as artists is to keep pushing things forward and challenging people.
When you’re in a band for 24 years, we’ve been through many eras. We’ve had our Death Bat Logo and many things that, 24 years later, we find fun to rework. However, the last time [our audiences] saw us was six years ago, so their mindset is one thing, and they think they’ll see more of that, and when you show them something new, like an immersive event or VR and AR content, it’s always going to be different.
The artwork for this record, the visual aesthetics — everything’s a 180-degree turn from what we used to do, and that’s where we’re at right now, and I think the fans are going to really appreciate it in the future. They seemed really excited at AREA15.
I also think they’re hearing new music and seeing new visuals for the first time. It’s like a sensory overload, which is great. We have a lot of content, and we want to show [our audiences] a lot of things, so it’ll be interesting to see where it all goes.
XR Today: Do you believe the dystopia in ‘We Love You’ could foreshadow events in the Metaverse after it’s realised? What are your thoughts on the relationship between man and emerging technologies?
M Shadows: I think things always run the risk of becoming some sort of dystopia. You know, dystopia can also be based on people’s opinions, person-to-person, or how they feel about certain situations.
We have drug problems in the [United States] linked to pharmaceuticals. We have political divides. We have all sorts of things that some people might call dystopian right now.
On the other hand, you also have poverty at less than it’s ever been in the history of the world. More people have equal rights — even though it’s not perfect yet — than it’s ever been in the history of the world.
There are a bunch of metrics that show that the world is a better place to live in now than it was potentially in the past.
However, so many things make us depressed and still make life very tough. When you look at the future, I think technologies can alleviate some of that, but they can also make things much worse.
That’s why it’s going to be very important that we carve out our technologies to work for us and make our lives better, not worse. I think it’s all about one’s perspective, and I think it’s about guiding these things to, hopefully, have a really positive impact on the future.
Something like [the song] ‘We Love You’ is more about the promise of everything being great, everyone’s special, and everything’s going to be just fine, but then you’re just thrown immediately into the rat race.
Unless you can find yourself, the rat race can become very blurry, disorienting, and can take you down the rabbit hole of depression, and that’s not what we want to see. This song outlines these sorts of ideas.
XR Today: Anything else you would like to add?
M Shadows: The only thing I’d add is that I hope this record, and what we’re doing with Web3, The Death Bats Club, and the weightiness of this record inspires people, even if they don’t love the actual content that we’re providing.
I hope it inspires people to want to live outside the box, push boundaries, and see where they can take their own art. If anything, even if you don’t love what we did, we hope that people take inspiration from the chances we’ve taken, the willingness to really start fresh, and throw everything we’ve done before it away, to unify our new art.
This was done to get the band in a place where we all feel completely happy. As an artist, you just want to be happy with your output and what you’re providing. Once it gets out to the audience, that’s for them — it’s their record now, and they can decide whether they like it or not. I [would like to see] artists pushing out hundreds more.
