M. SHADOWS: How AVENGED SEVENFOLD Captured 'Live Feel' On 'The Stage' Album

AVENGED SEVENFOLD singer M. Shadows was interviewed on the January 9 edition of “Whiplash”, the KLOS radio show hosted by Full Metal Jackie. You can now listen to the chat using the widget below.

Asked how AVENGED SEVENFOLD managed to capture more of a live vibe on its latest album, “The Stage”, M. Shadows said: “[By working with] a great producer. Joe Barresi [QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE, TOOL] brought a lot of new things to the table. And one thing that I had never done was to do full-song vocal takes, where you sing from the very first lyric all the way to the end of the song, and as your voice starts straining, and as it gets a little more tough on the vocals, you get that live feel.”

He continued: “In a live performance, you can’t just stop because it doesn’t sound right or your voice doesn’t feel right; you’ve gotta go [and] you’ve gotta push through it. And so for me, just having that… you know, where the tape starts rolling and you start recording and you’re not stopping and you’re going and you start getting these moments where you get more of a live feel, because you’re just going for it. We did that with the drums as well, and with the guitars as well; we kind of just sat there and said, ‘As things start getting more strained and you start having to push harder, it’s got more of that live feel.’ So we went with that based off of Joe‘s recommendation.”

“The Stage” debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 album chart in November. Co-produced by the band and Barresi, the disc features eleven panoramic tracks tied together by an Artificial Intelligence theme. Inspired by the writings of Carl Sagan and Elon Musk, the album is the band’s first thematic release. While the term “AI” conjures up images of robots and fantasy films, the band steers clear of a science fiction storyline. Instead, the album sees them taking a futurist’s look at the accelerated rate at which technology’s intelligence is expanding and what that means — good and bad — for the future.

AVENGED SEVENFOLD made the album available at midnight on October 27 with almost no promotion beforehand, save for the arrival of a new song one week earlier. The quintet unveiled the disc with a live-streamed performance from the rooftop of Capitol Records in Hollywood, California.

Beginning this weekend, “Whiplash” will air every Sunday night from 9:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. on the Los Angeles radio station 95.5 KLOS. The show can be heard on the KLOS web site at 955klos.com or you can listen in on the KLOS channel on iHeartRadio. Full Metal Jackie also hosts a nationally syndicated radio program, which can be heard all over the country. To see a full list of stations carrying Full Metal Jackie‘s show and when it airs, go to FullMetalJackieRadio.com.