Avenged Sevenfold frontman M. Shadows says nothing will make him play it safe when it comes to making music because he really "couldn't care less" about anyone else's opinion.
The Californian metal outfit's eighth album Life Is But a Dream... was released in 2023 and fans were split over its merits.
But Shadows says he has learned to accept they'll never please everybody and he insists artistic creativity is all about pushing boundaries. It was a discussion with Linkin Park bassist Dave Farrell that helped make him comfortable about discounting outside opinions.
Shadows tells Rock Feed: "We were at dinner probably a year ago and we were talking about Life Is But A Dream…, and he says, 'If you were to take your record right now, or any record that you love, and show it to everybody here, how much weight would you put behind any of these people's opinions?' And the answer is zero.
"I couldn't care less about other people's opinions. But one rule I made myself a long time ago is I listen to the positivity equally to the negativity, meaning I don't care about either.
"If a review is a 10 out of 10, cool. It could be bought and paid for. Cool. It doesn't matter. If it's a zero out of 10, it also doesn't matter. So I think that you can't just walk around with all your good stuff and then ignore the bad. You have to kind of ignore them both, in my opinion.
"At the end of the day, we're not making art by committee. It's not, like, everybody give us your ideas and we're all gonna kind of morph the same thing. We have A.I. to do that now.
"You're gonna be able to take your favourite records and A.I. can spit out something sort of like it. But you need artists and creatives to keep pushing the boundaries. Some things are gonna work, some things aren't.
"But at the end of the day, even if something doesn't work, it might spark in someone else, 'Oh, that was bold. Where can I push limits a little more?' And I think that's how this whole space thrives."
Metal Hammer's review of Life Is But a Dream... described it as "a brilliantly deranged, LSD-soaked psycho-metal musical."
