In a conversation with Bradley Hall, Avenged Sevenfold frontman M. Shadows explained that many bands are struggling financially, and said it will only get worse as time goes on.
Although Avenged Sevenfold is managing, Shadows pointed out that even big bands aren’t immune to rising expenses. “You can’t brute-force it,” he explained. “It’s really crazy because when you get to our kind of level, everybody on the crew is A-list. And they’re all being pulled in different directions, so they all make high-end amounts of money. More trucks, more drivers, more gasoline… We’ve already seen a lot of bands canceling tours; you’re gonna see a lot more. I know what we make, and I know it’s incredibly hard, even for us.”
Shadows also discussed how the challenges of touring have forced bands to rethink their strategies. “Unless you can put something together that keeps you in one city [or] places where you can play multiple nights…”
Unfortunately, Avenged Sevenfold isn’t the only band struggling with financial problems; there are actually more names than you can imagine. Corey Taylor, for example, explained that even with Slipknot’s popularity, the financial rewards aren’t very high. “Honestly, in a weird way, we don’t make a lot of money. I mean, we make enough to live, obviously, and we can live comfortably, but we’ve never been offered massive deals.”
Taylor added, “There’s a lot of us in the band, and there’s a whole crew that we have to pay. There’s the production that we have to pay for. There’s all of this sh*t that we need to pay for. So at the end of the day, we are paid pretty much commensurate with what we are worth.”
Mastodon’s Bill Kelliher also chimed in on the matter. “They go to the merch stand and they’re, like, ‘Oh, their f*cking t-shirts are $60. They’re just raking us over the coals.’ Let me explain the details. Venues, they take 20 to 30% sometimes, most of the time, of your merch money, when they have nothing to do with merch money. And they shouldn’t.” He added, “If you play with a bigger band like Slayer, Metallica, Iron Maiden you have to price match with their shirts. So there’s a lot of things that are hidden from the general public.”
“There are still budgetary issues, absolutely. Every cool idea you can ever come up with is really expensive. It always costs money, and money is what controls everything. You have to pick and choose,” Ghost’s Tobias Forge added.
Avenged Sevenfold released ‘Life Is But A Dream…’ on June 2 of last year and has recently announced a series of European shows and festival appearances for the summer of 2025.
The 12 shows will take place across Europe in June, including headline performances at major festivals like Release Athens, Rock For People, Provinssi Rock, and Tons Of Rock. This will be the band’s second tour in Europe since the release of their latest album.
