AVENGED SEVENFOLD officially kicked off the first part of its “Life Is But A Dream…” North American tour last night (Tuesday, July 18) at Freedom Mortgage Pavilion, Camden, New Jersey. Fan-filmed video of the entire show can be seen below.
As was the case with AVENGED SEVENFOLD‘s concerts in Los Angeles and New York last month, the group’s 16-song set included five songs from AVENGED SEVENFOLD‘s latest album, “Life Is But A Dream…”: “Game Over”, “Mattel”, “We Love You”, “Nobody” and the three-track run of “G”, “(O)rdinary” and “(D)eath”. The latter has been described in one review as by far the most left-field sounding part of the LP, ranging in style from metal/country [“G”], to full-blown DAFT PUNK impersonation [“(O)rdinary”] to lounge jazz [“(D)eath”].
AVENGED SEVENFOLD‘s setlist for the Freedom Mortgage Pavilion concert was as follows:
01. Game Over
02. Mattel
03. Afterlife
04. Hail To The King
05. We Love You
06. Buried Alive
07. The Stage
08. So Far Away
09. Nobody
10. Nightmare
11. Bat Country
12. Unholy Confessions
13. A Little Piece Of Heaven
14. G
15. (O)rdinary
16. (D)eath
In a recent interview with Lou Brutus of HardDrive Radio, AVENGED SEVENFOLD singer M. Shadows discussed the experimental nature of “Life Is But A Dream…” Written and recorded over the span of four years, it was produced by Joe Barresi and AVENGED SEVENFOLD in Los Angeles and mixed by Andy Wallace in the Poconos, Pennsylvania. The album is a journey through an existential crisis; a very personal exploration into the meaning, purpose and value of human existence with the anxiety of death always looming.
“We were just looking for really bold moments — in life, in art, in film,” M. Shadows explained. “Things that we could sort of wrap our minds around an audio representation of how we were feeling about certain things.
“At this point, playing around with melody, playing around with tones, playing around with left turns, curveballs was really appealing to us.
“I think we’ve proven to everyone, whether they like the band or not, that we kind of know the rules of music, and this record, we were able to just go break all the rules,” he continued.
“Mike Shinoda [of LINKIN PARK] put it to me really perfectly — I love his insight on a lot of things — and he said, ‘This record is like you guys throwing paint at the wall, but if a fourth-grader was doing it, you’d say that’s just paint on the wall. But because of everything you’ve done before, we all know you know how to make a beautiful painting, so this record is actually really special because it’s not just paint on the wall. You guys have broken all the rules and done things in an abstract way. But we wanna listen and pay attention because we know what you guys have done before.’ And I thought it was an interesting way of putting it, ’cause those [LINKIN PARK] guys — Dave [‘Phoenix’ Farrell] and Mike — have been big fans of this record. And I think that was a cool way of putting it.”
The singer, whose real name is Matt Sanders, added: “We kind of just really wanted to push the boundaries — the musical boundaries, the lyrical boundaries, the themes — and we didn’t want anything on the record to sound generic or phoned in or not exciting. We wanted to redo everything we’ve ever done, where even the song lengths and the way we kind of put these little pieces of ear candy, but we get away from it quick. Or staying away from three choruses, or if there is three choruses, they’re all vastly different. And really thinking about turning the traditional landscape of how you would normally put a song together on its head, but do it in an interesting way — not just to do it, but just to do it in a way that we think people will enjoy and give them sort of a reason to get to the end of songs or get to the next song on the record. And I think that was just a mindset this time, was just a little different — really looking at those things.”
AVENGED SEVENFOLD made its first festival appearance in five years on May 19 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 at AREA15 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
In April, AVENGED SEVENFOLD announced the second leg of its extensive “Life is But A Dream…” North American tour featuring support from FALLING IN REVERSE. Produced by Live Nation, leg two includes stops in Nashville, Denver, Austin, and more before concluding at Fort Worth’s Dickies Arena on October 15.
The first leg with support from ALEXISONFIRE and KIM DRACULA includes thirteen cities across the U.S. and Canada, such as Mansfield, Québec City, Tinley Park, Calgary, and more.