AVENGED SEVENFOLD performed “Dear God”, a song from the band’s self-titled fourth album, live for the first time in 15 years during AVENGED‘s May 25 concert in Jakarta, Indonesia. Speaking to Medcom.id, AVENGED SEVENFOLD singer M. Shadows stated about the decision to play the track (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Well, Indonesia is very far away. And the fact that there’s such a big community of AVENGED SEVENFOLD fans here is pretty special to us. We also know that ‘Dear God’, for some reason, really struck a chord here and people seem to enjoy it. I know they listened to it in their Internet cafés in the early 2000s. And there was a time when we sort of didn’t wanna accept that, and when we came here, we didn’t play it a couple of times. But now we think it’s become something larger than us almost, and so we’re really excited to play it for the first time in 15 years.”
Regarding the musical and lyrical inspiration for “Dear God”, M. Shadows said: “When we wrote it, we were actually inspired by a couple of different country artists in America. We were kind of in this situation where we were writing up in this city called Big Bear, California, and we were drinking a little bit. And Brian [Elwin Haner Jr., a.k.a. guitarist Synyster Gates) and Jimmy [‘The Rev’ Sullivan, drummer] were saying how they could make a hit pop country song easily. And they just started playing those chords and singing that song. And we liked it, so we left it on the record. But lyrically, it’s just about leaving your family and being on the road. I have kids now, so it more pertains to my kids, but at the time, my wife, leaving my wife and just being gone for months at a time and missing someone, and it could translate to anything — being at war, being far away for your work or just being on tour. So just missing loved ones.”
AVENGED SEVENFOLD launched the 2024 leg of the “Life Is But A Dream…” North American tour on March 6 at KeyBank Center in Buffalo, New York. The band’s 2024 run included AVENGED SEVENFOLD‘s first-ever performances in Manchester, New Hampshire; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Newark. The group performed in Des Moines, Iowa for the first time in 18 years; Cleveland, Ohio; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for the first time in 15 years.
During a recent appearance on the “Marvin” podcast, AVENGED SEVENFOLD‘s M. Shadows was asked which he prefers: headlining arenas or performing at huge festivals. “I think both have their perks,” the singer, whose real name is Matt Sanders, said. “Both are interesting. I think in terms of knowing that you sound good and having control over everything, it’s gotta be smaller places. Even if you do some of those like warehouse sort of like — something like the Forum [in Los Angeles], which is built out for music now or things that are smaller than that, those have the sweat and the energy, and you know it sounds good ’cause you can kind of get a vibe. Some of those festivals, it’s just being projected and then projected again and then projected again, and you’re seeing like the fist raise up and then everyone’s on like a four-second delay and you’re just, like, ‘I don’t know what these people are hearing. Maybe it’s good, maybe it’s not.'”
He continued: “A lot of stuff for artists is just confidence, and if you know it sounds good and you know you’re killing it, then that that feeds into this sort of circular energy back to the audience. And festivals, you can get it, but I definitely find myself questioning while I’m on stage, like, ‘What is even going on here?’, ’cause sometimes stuff’s just getting hit back at you. But there’s great festivals and then there’s ones that you just know are just awful, and you’re just, like, ‘Please get me out of here.’ I can tell by our sound guy back there just… You can tell if he’s doing this [makes vigorous motion with both of his hands over an imaginary sound board], we’re in trouble.”
AVENGED SEVENFOLD has been touring in support of its latest album, “Life Is But A Dream…”, which sold 36,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in its first week of release to land at position No. 13 on the Billboard 200 chart.
AVENGED SEVENFOLD made its first festival appearance in five years on May 19, 2023 at Welcome To Rockville at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida.
AVENGED SEVENFOLD‘s first concert since June 2018 took place on May 12, 2023 at AREA15 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
To date, AVENGED SEVENFOLD has sold over 10 million albums worldwide and earned two consecutive No. 1 albums on Billboard’s Top 200 Albums chart (2010’s “Nightmare” and 2013’s “Hail To The King”) to go along with over a billion video views and a billion-plus Spotify streams, as well as multiple No. 1 singles on rock radio.