Avenged Sevenfold lead vocalist M. Shadows spoke to Metal Hammer and reflected his thoughts on the band’s upcoming album. The singer stated that Kanye West greatly influenced them during the album’s creation process.
After releasing their seventh studio album named ‘The Stage’ on October 28, 2016, which was considered the band’s first concept album with a well-crafted progressive metal sound, Avenged Sevenfold had an almost five-year break from recording.
The band members recently shared the good news that they have started writing new materials but added that they aren’t in a hurry as they didn’t want to disappoint their fans. M. Shadows said they would complete their eighth studio album this month as soon as they finish the strings with an orchestra.
The singer added that the new album will be released sometime after March and surprised their fans by saying that the band and their recording were inspired by the famous rapper Kanye West. Shadows drew attention to West’s ‘soul music,’ which he didn’t have a chance to listen to when he was young as his father would listen to Boston and Alice Cooper.
Shadows said in his interview the following:
“In January, we’re going in to finish the strings on the record. The record’s been recorded for a year, but we haven’t been able to put the real strings on it because we couldn’t fly out to Prague. When an orchestra has to social distance and they aren’t sitting next to each other, they can get out of tune, and we have just finally got to a place where we can use this 70-piece orchestra as we intended.
We finish the record in February, mix it in March. We’re very influenced by Kanye West. The thing about Kanye is that he is pulling from such great soul music. I didn’t grow up with that stuff – my dad listened to Boston and Alice Cooper, I didn’t get that taste of black music and old soul. So, diving deep into jazz musicians… we’re not trying to do a jazz record, but the chord changes and progressions are so eye-opening to us.”
Since his father was a Boston and Alice Cooper fan, M. Shadows he didn’t have the chance to discover jazz music at a young age like Kayne West. The frontman wanted to listen and learn more about jazz musicians, although they will never release a jazz record.
