Avenged Sevenfold singer M. Shadows has branded one of the band’s ballads as a “throwaway” song.
The frontman makes the comment during a recent interview with Youtuber Bradley Hall, which sees him take a deep dive into the California quintet’s catalogue.
When the pair make it to controversial 2013 album Hail To The King, Shadows doesn’t have anything nice to say about sixth track Crimson Day. “I think Crimson Day is a throwaway,” he states (via Loudwire). “That’s not a great ballad. We’ve had much better ballads.”
The vocalist then doubles down on his critique, saying that, although his band have “always done pretty good ballads”, “Crimson Day is the lowest on my list of things we’ve ever done.”
It’s not all doom and gloom, however. Shadows has a far more positive opinion of fellow Hail… track Planets, which he remains proud of despite it being the least-streamed song on the album.
“I also think the coolest thing we’ve ever done on that record is Planets,” he adds, “and of course it’s the least listened to. To me, it is the coolest thing on that record.”
Hail…, Avenged’s sixth album, proved divisive when first released 12 years ago. The band intentionally pursued a more arena-friendly sound on the record, pulling noticeable influence from Metallica and Guns ’N’ Roses. Some fans and reviewers didn’t appreciate the change, deeming it derivative, but it also resulted in some of the band’s most popular songs, especially the title track.
In the interview with Hall, Shadows acknowledges that Avenged “dumbed down” their music when making Hail….
“Hail To the King was a response to the fact that we were a big band, but everywhere we went none of our songs could be played anywhere like in a bar,” he says. “Like, we have nothing that lives up to AC/DC or Metallica’s Black Album or all these records that we love, all of our stuff’s a little too complex, a little too complicated, a little too neoclassical.”
He continues: “So we started really cutting close obviously to wearing our influences very much on our sleeves in this sort of dumbed-down version of rock music. And that’s not a shot on those bands because they do it brilliantly, they do it better than us, but we wanted to try our hand at doing some things like that, it’s very unnatural for us. It’s not what we do.”
In response to Hail…’s simplified sound and heavy promotion, Avenged switched gears for its followup, surprise-releasing progressive metal behemoth The Stage in 2016. The band have continued to experiment ever since, as heard on latest album Life Is But A Dream… (2023).
