AVENGED SEVENFOLD will release its sixth studio album,
"Hail To The King", on August 27. The long-awaited follow-up to 2010's
"Nightmare" was once again produced by
Mike Elizondo and is the first to be wholly written without drummer and key songwriter
James "The Rev" Sullivan, who died in December 2009.
Sullivan has since been replaced by
Arin Ilejay, a former member of
CONFIDE.
In other news,
AVENGED SEVENFOLD has announced the
"Hail To The King"
tour — a massive headlining U.S. arena tour to take place this October
and the band's first full scale American tour since 2011. The run of
dates will kick off in Chicago, Illinois on Thursday, October 3 and wrap
up on October 26 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Supporting the band on all dates
will be special guests
DEFTONES and
GHOST B.C. Additionally, starting today, fans of
AVENGED SEVENFOLD can pre-order a special, limited-edition box set of
"Hail To The King". The antique gold colored embossed foil wrapped "treasure box" will feature exclusive
"Hail To The King"
artwork and include a deluxe version of the album on CD with a download
card to an extra bonus track, an exclusive Canvas Print, a 20-page
photo book featuring photos of the band through out the years, a Death
Bat Challenge Coin, Death Bat Skeleton Key, an instant download of the
new single, and a download of the album on street date. Fans that
purchase the box set will also receive pre-sale access to the upcoming
U.S. tour. The box is available for
purchase here and once they sell out no more will be made.
"Hail To The King" track listing:
01.
Shepherd Of Fire02.
Hail To The King03.
Doing Time04.
This Means War05.
Requiem06.
Crimson Day07.
Heretic08.
Coming Home09.
Planets10.
Acid Rain Asked how
"Hail To The King" is different from
AVENGED SEVENFOLD's previous efforts,
AVENGED SEVENFOLD singer
M. Shadows told U.K.'s
Kerrang!
magazine: "For the last few records, people have asked what we were
listening to — and it's always been the same records, it hasn't changed.
It's always been
PANTERA,
METALLICA,
MEGADETH and
AC/DC.
We feel that metal dropped off after the '90s in terms of production
and songwriting. Metal music isn't at the forefront as much as it used
to be."
He continued: "We wanted to write a record that was
highly influenced by the early '90s records and mid-'80s records we grew
up on. Then we went back even further and were influenced by [
BLACK]
SABBATH and
LED ZEPPELIN.
We studied those records, looked at what they were doing and how they
were doing it. A lot of them came out of the blues, so we studied the
blues and classical music. We just wanted to write a record that was
different."
Regarding what it felt like to be writing a full-length album for the first time without
Jimmy,
Shadows said: "When we started the band,
The Rev didn't write much. Up until
'City of Evil'
[2005] and the [2007 self-titled] white album, he didn't write much
except his drum parts. So we kind of got back to before that. I
definitely didn't like it very much, though. [In the past], we'd get to a
point where we had written six or seven songs and we'd feel completely
drained. That was when he would always come in with three or four great
songs, and that would pretty much fill the album. He brought a different
influence; he was a full-on metalhead for life, and he could always
write in whatever style you were looking for. So when we got to tracks
six and seven for this album, we really missed him. I really wished
Jimmy was there to finish the album up. But that wasn't the case, so we had to really take our time."
Shadows also spoke about how
Arin
has settled into the band saying: "He killed it on this record! He did
everything we needed him to do. We didn't go in there and write all the
drum fills for him, or get on
Pro Tools to fix it all. He just
killed it. He knew what he needed to do, put in lots of work in
pre-production and mentally got to the place he needed to be."
He
added: "The record will surprise people, because the drumming is
completely different to anything we've done before. That's because of
the way the songwriting is. We wrote songs that needed this type of
drumming. I spoke to
Arin and said, 'Look, people are going to
come at you because of what this record sounds like. They're going to
think you should be overplaying like
Jimmy and
Mike [
Portnoy, ex-
DREAM THEATER and drummer on
'Nightmare'] played.' But if
The Rev
was here with us, this is how he'd have played it. He wouldn't overplay
it, he'd sit back in the groove and he'd try to make it as powerful as
possible, rather than as technical as possible. I asked [
Arin] if
he was okay with that; I asked if he was okay with the hate he was
going to get. He said he was, and that he wanted to do whatever was best
for us and the songs."
AVENGED SEVENFOLD took several months off after it finished touring to promote
"Nightmare" — which included a headlining run on the 2011 edition of the
Uproar Festival.
Asked how important it was it for the band to take a break before beginning work on the new CD,
Shadows
said: "We had to recharge our batteries. We wanted to wait until some
inspiration came to us. We didn't want to go in too soon and throw out
some crap. We needed the time off because we'd been touring so long, and
it was time for us to settle down and get our bearings back. We would
have imploded if we had written a record straight out of the touring
cycle. We don't want to throw out a turd; we don't want to suddenly put
out a terrible record becase we rushed it."
He added: "We
literally sat around for a few months. And then you get bored of that,
so you go write a record because you're fucking sick of it. Sometimes,
lying around on the couch gets you pumped up, because you have a moment
where you realize that you can't just do that for the rest of your life.
We all hit that point, so we were and wrote a record."
AVENGED SEVENFOLD will celebrate the album release by playing a free show at the Hollywood Palladium on August 26.
