Avenged Sevenfold: “We want to make a roadmap to show artists that there’s a better way”

One of the most difficult tasks facing any long-standing band is the successful navigation of the swaying, rickety rope bridge connecting the eternally adolescent instincts of rock’n’roll with the requirements of adult life. Things change. A quarter of a century after forming in Huntington Beach, California, Avenged Sevenfold are wilder and weirder than they ever were, but the gang is no longer the only important thing in its members lives. Certainly, Matt’s admission that as a younger man, “I wanted to go on tour so bad [but] then I realised all I really want to do is be with my family,” surely explains why his group’s appearance atop the Sunday night bill at Download this coming weekend will likely be the only UK appearance in support of last year’s Life Is But A Dream… LP. If you want the truth of it, he’s “not interested in a run of 17 arena shows” in Britain and mainland Europe.

So, yeah, pick the bones out of that.

On a typically bright May morning in southern California, the 42-year-old singer strides through his spacious home in Orange County fresh from a road trip of a different kind. Swapping microphones and spotlights for rods and landing nets, our interviewee has spent the last five days on the lakes of Utah fishing for carp and trout with his two young sons. The excursion made for good eating and good sights. Beneath a jewelled canopy, a night-time constellation stretching all the way to the horizon made it seem like Matt was hurtling across the Milky Way. As the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson says in the third and final act of Exist, the mind-exploding 15-minute final track from The Stage, there are ‘more stars than words and sounds ever uttered by all humans who ever lived’.

“I have this mind-set of being put on this earth when you didn’t ask to be here,” Matt says. “There’s no real objective. But when I was with the kids in Utah… it felt like I was flying through space. You feel that you’re in it. And you think about things and you ponder things. You look at the human expression of what we do while we’re here.”

In senses musical and interpersonal, and as a business organisation that understands ways of mastering new technology without recourse to obsolete third parties, Avenged Sevenfold have done their share of thinking and pondering. After stepping away from a legally disputatious long-term recording contact with Warner Bros. – having returned after releasing The Stage on Capitol – Life Is But A Dream… was their last album for the company, and Matt is quick to confirm that his band “will never sign another record deal”.

As fast as that, we’re back to the theme of evolution. A7X no longer need the things on which they used to rely. They don’t require permission from meddlesome music executives to proceed in a manner of their own choosing. Perhaps more radical still is an appreciation of the needlessness of seeking the blessings of an international constituency who have gathered to their flame. Sure, the approval of an audience provides nourishment to all bands, but to seek it before the fact is an impediment to the most important aspect of art and music: freedom.

“If the fans like one thing from you, they want more of that,” Matt says. “Or they think they want more of that. And if you let it, that will mould what your next creative output will be. But you have to reject that audience capture or else you’ll become a brand. And then the next thing you know you’re trying to look like you did when you were 20… But you’re actually 60.”

Elsewhere, though, philosophical similarities blend like harmonies from a barbershop quartet. In seeking to shorten the divide between artist and audience – foregoing formal record contracts for technological advancements such as virtual concerts, a social hub linked to Fortnite, NFTs sold through their Deathbats Club, and more – the younger group have swept away the kinds of 20th century business practices of which Metallica removed themselves by taking ownership of their own music and launching Blackened Records in 2012. The tactics employed by Avenged Sevenfold are different, of course, but the campaign is the same. In battling their way towards an endgame of total emancipation, both bands have evolved to the point of complete control over all they survey.

“We’re one of those bands who [have] actually survived releasing eight records for a major record label,” Matt explains. “And so we’ve seen a lot. And we’ve seen the numbers, and we’ve seen the ways that corporations pretty much control art. And it’s an interesting, weird sort of dynamic, but you’re going to get people involved who… take make money off the back of art. And one of the things that happens is that the artists say, ‘Leave me alone, I want to create.’ And that’s fair enough. I get that. But my own brain works a little differently. I like getting into the technology and the weeds of the contracts that we sign. I like seeing the deals and I like seeing how much somebody is making off me or our band – where it’s fair and where it’s a little egregious.”

Time was that purists would regard the kind of advice spoken by Gene Simmons – that, in the music business, briefcases are as important as guitars – as being the words of someone more interested in cash registers than chord progressions. It was the kind of chat that was seen as being a bit, you know, déclassé. A bit grubby. But with the days when the idealistic artist could make like an ostrich when confronted with matters relating to business long gone, today these words could hardly be more prophetic had they been engraved on tablets of stone.

With the decayed infrastructure of the past sustained only by habit and illusion, major labels are no longer good for securing window displays in record shops that, anyway, are closing at a depressing rate. Long gone are the days of labels fronting hundreds of thousands of dollars for music videos, or of promoting singles to radio stations that would punt their “product” upon the ears of listeners who would otherwise remain oblivious to a band’s existence. The game, you see, has changed. In an age of instant technology, of artists reaching listeners in seconds, MTV and KROQ are no longer the gatekeepers of public taste. As Matt says, “since the advent of the internet and the advent of streaming, we’ve basically been living in the wild west”.

He goes on.

“So now what they do is they go to TikTok and they take someone who’s already gone viral [on social media], but who doesn’t have a label and they wrap ’em up into a shitty deal,” he says. “But they can’t do anything for them. When Avenged Sevenfold were on Warner Bros., they were trying to figure out how to create a viral TikTok moment. What? I’m a fucking 42-year-old man, I’m not trying to figure out how to do a viral TikTok moment. I’m sorry. You’re going to take 24 cents on our dollar and that’s all you can do, come up with a fucking fake viral TikTok moment?”

M. Shadows is a voluble interviewee. The ease and frequency with which he unfurls his fittingly Californian smile suggests a future, should it be desired, as a model in toothpaste commercials. He likes basketball, not just as a viewer but as a participant who plays on tarmac courts three times a week. “I think I’m a nice person,” he says, “at least I hope so – in fact, everyone thinks I’m too nice.” But please understand that he’s no longer the same person he used to be. A generation ago, when A7X put their names to a recording contract that elevated them to the big leagues, they were, like all artists of the time, flattered and grateful for the attention bestowed upon them. Bands didn't question the imbalance of power between giant corporations and a group of eager young rockers. Not anymore, though. In 2024, the pendulum has swung in the favour of music makers – in principle at least; for some of them, certainly – whose freedom can be secured by pushing at a door that has been unlocked by modern technology. In fact, should you choose to follow him, Matt might even show you the way.

“I would say that Avenged Sevenfold is exploring new technologies,” he says. “And we’ve found things that are going to be able to help artists in the future. Because a lot of artists don’t want to help themselves – and, like I said, I totally understand that. But we want to be the people who make a roadmap and can show artists that there’s a better way to gain ownership over your own art.”

These days, to a noticeable degree, Matt has cleared his mind of this kind of clutter. In fact, in seeking to separate art from artifice, he claims not to have even checked the debut chart positions of Life Is But A Dream… – number 21 in the UK and number 13 in the United States, by the way – adding, instead, that if this and other releases “connect with one person, that’s really special. It’s really special. It’s like an emotional handshake in a way.” As it should be, it’s good enough that the album is a masterpiece of imagination and execution. The question of how many, or how few, people notice is really, and rightly, none of his business.

“I would, though, say that I am glad [about] how everything in my life played out,” he says. “Meaning, I’m glad the way I was, just as I’m glad that I was able to see how un-useful some of that stuff was, later in my life.”

Not everything has been figured out, of course, because not everything can be. That’s what the music is for. That’s the point of it, thank goodness. By spraying their talent upon an increasingly vast canvas, A7X have bucked the truism that bands with recording careers lasting more than a decade become creatures of habit in hock to status and security. In declining the temptations of such predictable outcomes, the evolutionary march that made Avenged Sevenfold brilliant begs a truly tantalising question. Where on earth will they go next?

Because as Matt Shadows says, “When an artist feels free you can feel that freedom in their art. There’s just no doubt about it. You really can.”

Avenged Sevenfold headline Download Festival on June 16. Tickets are sold out.

Read this next:

• 8 lesser known Avenged Sevenfold songs that everyone needs to hear
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• Out Of The Shadows: The story of Avenged Sevenfold’s Nightmare