In a new interview with Rolling Stone, Avenged Sevenfold’s Synyster Gates discussed Kanye West’s influence on the band’s sound and creative process.
Gates explained how Kanye’s approach to music and his willingness to take risks inspired the band: “To pull the curtain back a little bit, I’ve always said if Kanye makes another record, then so can we. It’s so inspiring, the stuff that he does. It’s way more unique and creative. I think he blows his contemporaries away with that type of stuff. We really adopted very diverse soundscapes, very dynamic soundscapes, where, at the turn of a dime, it goes into something completely unique [in a song]. But for us, it has to feel like it’s seamless. Maybe for most people, they’re just like, ‘What the f*ck are these guys doing? How much drugs did they take?’ But for us, we’re just really inspired by doing things differently like that.”
Gates also pointed out how Kanye’s way of thinking, particularly his tendency to go off on tangents and then try to make sense of them, resonated with him personally. “So yeah, Kanye, just even when he speaks about… he did, I think, it was Joe Rogan. He’d just go off on these little words salad tangents. He says, ‘Nobody knows what I’m saying, then I try my best to circle back and make it all make sense.’ I think that resonated so much with me, because I, as you can clearly tell, I f*cking just go off on crazy tangents, hopefully trying to bring it back.”
“But I, I always felt that that was kind of maybe wrong, but you have to lean into who you are, and it’s maybe not giving me the courage to do that sh*t anyway. But it was like, ‘Okay, I totally understand that.’ That is the same way musically, going up on tangents, and somehow try to make the symphony work,” he added.
Avenged Sevenfold has previously spoken about Kanye West’s influence on their music. In 2022, lead vocalist M. Shadows discussed the band’s creative process leading up to the release of ‘Life Is But A Dream…’
He explained how the band, like an orchestra, had to adjust to challenges posed by social distancing, which affected how they worked together. “When an orchestra have 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.”
The band released ‘Life Is But A Dream…’ on June 2 last year, and recently, they have announced a series of European shows and festival appearances for the summer of 2025.
The 12 shows will take place across Europe in June and include headline performances at major festivals such as Release Athens, Rock For People, Provinssi Rock, and Tons Of Rock. This tour will be the band’s second visit to Europe since the release of the latest record.
