Life Is But A Dream…

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It’s also very funny in places. One of many knowing winks on the album, Game Over contains the lyric, ‘ The bestest part of waking up.’ Now, with "Life Is But A Dream..." , the band have once again morphed. This time, they've released a collection of songs that bring together so many different sounds, it's almost overwhelming, from jazz to grunge to electronic to psychedelia. Perhaps the METALLICA comparisons will finally be put to rest with this one?

I appreciate a lot of his insight,” Shadows enthuses of Mike, “and he was like, ‘If a four-year-old was throwing paint at a canvas you would say that it’s a four-year-old and they don’t know what they’re doing.’ And he said, ‘You guys have painted beautiful paintings up to this point, to where now when you splat stuff on a canvas, it’s art; it’s special.’ And he’s like, ‘That’s what I feel like this record is, because we know you know the rules, but you broke all the rules, and so it’s more meaningful.’” The art kind of grounds you in this reality of the life experience that we are going through. I think it compliments it really well. I think the art on this record is just as important as the music.” But they’re both stoked about where Avenged Sevenfold are at in 2023. Down the road from Syn, sat in his bright house with a scruffy mohawk-mullet and casual white T-shirt, M. Shadows radiates just as much positive energy as his bandmate. These days they take the approach to “not sweat the small stuff” where possible, and while their new music was treated with absolute seriousness, they have a healthy outlook on life and their career.Things get shitty,” he adds. “You have deaths all the time, and though you know that it’s gonna happen, there will be a point where you lose everybody you love – if you live long enough – or you’ll die yourself. There’s one of two options there. You need to be prepared for that, and you need to know what it means.” Relating to the orchestra on their level, he cites Stravinsky’s ‘The Rite Of Spring’ as a key reference point – disrupting the norms through music and allowing the orchestra to find comfort in that idea. OLiS - oficjalna lista sprzedaży - albumy" (in Polish). OLiS. Polish Society of the Phonographic Industry. Note: Change the date to 02.06.2023–08.06.2023 under "zmień zakres od–do:". Retrieved June 16, 2023. Synyster Gates – lead guitar (1–10), production, orchestration, piano (1–3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11), Mellotron (1, 6), flute (1), Rhodes piano (2, 5, 10), Wurlitzer organ (2), synthesizer (6, 7, 10), Hammond organ, harmonica (6), lead vocals (6)

From the off, Avenged Sevenfold have stated that Life Is But A Dream… should be listened to as a whole. The idea of an ‘album’ sometimes feels like a lost art, but it is a joy to see a band fully commit to the ‘album’. It is perhaps a bold choice to make this statement early on, what with the lust for short, sharp hits on streaming services, however, fully immersing yourself in a record is truly rewarding. Opening with Game Over, a demented metal banger which sounds like Avenged channelling System Of A Down via Danny Elfman, things don’t fly too far off the handle at first: sprinkled around the noise are some delicate acoustic flourishes, a light bit of orchestral mischief, some nice crooning from Shadows to break up the mayhem. Mattel, lead-off single Nobody and We Love You also at least flirt with familiar territory, lurching from driving groove metal to droning doom to spiky thrash, layered with lush strings, tinkly piano, woozy sci-fi effects, ominous horns and subversive choir calls. You come into this world, you learn how we do things here, you learn what’s important here, you learn what success is here. But it really holds no weight outside of this human construct, this society and tribe we’ve built. And then one day you turn off.”Death is right there and it’s not supposed to be a sad thing”Shadows explains. “You’re here now I’m reminding you that you need to shape up. You need to live your life and do what you want to do. And if you take the record too seriously lyrically, then you are not doing that. We’re having fun making music and it’s our art and there is a message but we can have fun doing it as well.” When reflecting on Life Is But A Dream… in all its spectacularly gutsy glory, perhaps Mike Shinoda says it best of all. Chatting with M. Shadows about the record and giving his assessment, the Linkin Park man recently told Avenged Sevenfold’s singer of the band’s non-conformist approach that it’s like a “splat”. Bear with him on this one – it’s a compliment, honest. Indeed, the frontman worked incredibly hard on summing up these swirling thoughts in new and interesting ways throughout Life Is But A Dream… Partly inspired by Albert Camus’ 1942 novel The Stranger (though Syn stresses that it’s a “disservice” to Shadows if people think the album is exclusively pinpointed on that) as well as the work of outsider artist Wes Lang, there’s an absurdist lens with which he frequently used to write, but creativity hit him from plenty of other angles, too.

Brown, Tasha (May 31, 2023). "ALBUM REVIEW: Life Is but a Dream – Avenged Sevenfold". Distorted Sound . Retrieved June 5, 2023. Someone else declared, "This is what is must've been like to hear 'Bohemian Rhapsody' on the radio for the first time."Just going into his studio, it’s like walking into the temple of time in Zelda. The world stops. You just feel like you are in this void.”