For M. Shadows, frontman of Avenged Sevenfold, the creative impulse doesn’t come from a need to please or conform — it comes from the hunger to remain curious. In the latest episode of Fire With Fire, a video interview series created by Ryan J. Downey and produced in partnership with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Shadows sat down to discuss artistic restlessness, evolving technology, and why the band always aims to stay ahead of the curve — even if no one gets it at first.
“I don’t know where it comes from,” he admits when asked about the band’s refusal to stick to a formula (via Blabbermouth). “It’s just something that you can’t really tap into. I just know that when I wake up in the morning, I wanna be excited. I wanna get up and work on something that I wanna work on, and then I wanna show the world.”
That sense of urgency and anticipation has long been baked into the Avenged Sevenfold DNA. Their 2016 album The Stage explored artificial intelligence, nanotech, and cosmic questions long before such topics entered the mainstream conversation.
“I think The Stage was… we were talking about themes that literally weren’t even relevant till now. We were talking about A.I., nanotechnology, we were talking about the Big Bang, and Fermi paradox, and exploration. We were talking about all these things that literally just went [over people’s heads] when it came out. And now everyone’s, like, ‘Oh my God. You guys were…'”
According to Shadows, the band doesn’t chase trends; they chase instincts — that visceral, almost subconscious reaction when something feels ahead of its time. Whether it’s a concept album or a VR concert, it’s never about market response in the moment.
“I think that comes down to us being kind of on the cutting edge of what we felt was happening, a groundswell, and it inspired us to write about it. And then it just takes some time. The same way that I think when we do a VR concert in 2023, or whatever it is, and it might be till 2030 that everyone’s doing these, but ours will still be there to go back to.”
It’s not just about format either, but more about redefining the listening experience altogether. Drawing a line from The Beatles‘ experimentation with stereo to today’s audio frontiers, Shadows makes a compelling case that music is entering a new spatial era.
“These things aren’t going away, and they’re extremely compelling and they’re new mediums to really explore. I was explaining this to somebody the other day, like, the way we’ve thought about music is so westernized… Think about The Beatles sitting there, and they had these two stereo speakers, and everyone started messing around with drums over here, and Paul’s gonna be over here, and then Lennon’s gonna come over, and then we’re gonna put the vocals all over here. And they’re messing with two speakers.
“Now we’ve got Atmos, we’ve got VR, we’ve got Surround Sound, we’ve got all these things. And we were talking about this at the VR thing — what gets written? How does music overlay itself into all these new technologies? ‘Cause we’re not sitting there staring at two speakers anymore. And as that changes, the art is gonna change. The art changed with The Beatles because of stereo, because there was now an option to do wacky things, right? And then we’ve just lived with that for 40, 50 years, and that’s what we do. But things are gonna change. Spotify’s not gonna be here forever. There’ll be something different.”
That forward momentum can be both liberating and disorienting. What excites the band is often years ahead of what listeners are ready to absorb.
“Technology’s moving so fast right now that things, before they can even mature, they’re already over, because the next thing’s happening,” he says. “The exponential growth that we were talking about in paradigm is just happening at an alarming rate. And so we just like kind of keeping our eyes on the edge. When something just gets our bodies going, ‘Yeah, that’s fucking rad,’ then we go do it. And we do it and we put it out and we don’t worry about it.”
By the time fans are catching up to one album, the band has already moved on — literally and mentally.
“Now we’re on to the next thing. ‘Cause while you’re digesting that and worrying about what Avenged Sevenfold’s latest album, 2023’s Life Is But A Dream… is, we’re completely somewhere else at this point. My brain right now is just somewhere way far away from that record. But there are still people coming into that record right now and going, ‘I get it now. I get it.”
