ZACKY VENGEANCE Discusses Why AVENGED SEVENFOLD Didn’t Come Back With An Album Fans Expected

After seven years, Avenged Sevenfold made a comeback to the world with a new album titled Life Is But A Dream, which instantly caused rifts within the band’s fan base. Avenged Sevenfold’s newer progressive and experimental sound won over some fans, but others were obviously hoping for a more traditional Avenged Sevenfold album. Avenged Sevenfold made a risky decision by returning with an album that was so different from anything they had ever done before, but it’s obvious that they are happy with the outcome.

Zacky Vengeance, the guitarist for Avenged Sevenfold, now discusses in an interview with Blackcraft how simple it would have been for the group to record a standard metal album and call it a day. More importantly, though, he reveals why none of the band members desired to do so.

Having the time off gave us a chance to look at ourselves and really reflect. You get to that point in life when your life changes. We have families now, we have obligations, and the easy road is make the next Hail To The King album or do Nightmare Part Two, go package up with the same bands you’ve always played with, sell the same amount of tickets, get a paycheck, [and] you’ll be comfortable. And that just never really sat well with any of us. And it wasn’t like an internal discussion, like, ‘Hey, what are we gonna do to reinvent ourselves?’ I didn’t fucking care. It was, ‘What are we gonna do to not want to not do this?’ Because I never wanna feel like I’m phoning it in. And I never wanna feel like I’m just putting on the heavy metal vest and trying to grow my hair and trying to fit in, in hopes of being the next Metallica.

“It just doesn’t feel right. We didn’t start the band to do that. We wanted to be insane. We wanted to dress crazy. We wanted to write crazy music. And I think we all collectively, at the same moment, realized you either have to go all in on what you love and be completely fearless, which is what we’ve always lived and died by, and if you try and get pulled into the realm of playing it safe, which so many people do, because it’s easy to do when you have mouths to feed, and go up there and just go through the motions, that’s career suicide. And we collectively just said, ‘Let’s have fun with this. No matter, do what we want to do. Bounce off each other’s ideas, and let’s be happy as a band, the five of us. And if anybody else likes it, great. If they don’t, fuck it. At least we went down with the ship the way that we should.'”