Metal Anarchy

During a recent interview with Korno Espinosa, Avenged Sevenfold singer M. Shadows discussed the band’s decision to continue experimenting with their sound. According to him, the group “don’t really think about what fans expect.”

Shadows said the following when asked about evolving while still staying true to their roots:

“I don’t really think about staying true to anything but ourselves. So I think that’s the most punk rock thing you can do. When we were growing up, heavy metal and punk rock was the ‘anti’ music. It was not supposed to be in the mainstream. It was the thing that you kind of rolled your eyes at popular music, and it was very anti, it was very against the grain. And I think as an artist, as long as you can keep that edge and always kind of swim upstream and continue to push boundaries and live outside of boxes, then I think that’s the true essence of punk rock and heavy metal. I think once you start trying to commodify all that and you start trying to look at numbers and start trying to look at algorithms and start trying to be with the popular kids, I think that’s the most anti rock and metal thing you can do. So to me it’s about doing what you want and expressing yourself in a way that is a little bit anti everything else.”

He also added the following when asked about balancing experimentation with fan expectations:

“Yeah, we don’t really think about what fans expect. We just do what we think is cool. We’re constantly listening to new artists, we’re constantly being inspired by different things and newer things, and so we don’t expect our audience to understand where we’re at until we put something out. And we don’t feel the need at this point to handhold them. I think they’ve grown up with us and they’re older, and if they want that from us, they have it. And if they want the old stuff, they can go back and listen to the old stuff. But we’re not gonna try to rehash or retread any ground just to make somebody have a second-rate version of something we did in the past. Everything we did at a certain time was ahead of the curve or groundbreaking to us — at least that’s where we were mentally when we did ‘Waking The Fallen’. It was a different thing than what was out. It was different than everything else. When we did ‘City Of Evil’, it wasn’t a repeat of ‘Waking The Fallen’. And so we continue with that mindset, and we just wanna lead people somewhere new. We don’t really wanna make them feel too comfortable. I think that isn’t very exciting to us.”

[via Blabbermouth]