Avenged Sevenfold - The Stage (2016)^{Release ID: 5416}

Who would have thought that Avenged Sevenfold would change their sound from their most accessible album to their most obscure in a matter of three years? Avenged Sevenfold always seemed to be that band that real metalheads didn't want to talk about. At this point, A7X was far too mainstream for most, and that was especially prominent with 2013's Hail To The King. I honestly believed that this would be the end of Avenged Sevenfold as a group at least in the mainstream... I was half right.

What I wasn't expecting was for this group to pull a full 180 and write a progressive album, complete with an Ayreon-esque space opera through line that deals with visions of the apocalypse. I was very impressed by the promotional single and title track. M. Shadows sounds like he has found his groove again. Synyster Gates found his form again and the guitars play an important role again; something that was drastically missing on Hail To The King. The new drummer, Brooks Wackerman provides some stellar percussion work throughout the project.

So why don't I like it more? Well mostly it has to do with the production. Sure, the drums are technical and a marvel to hear, but they are excessively loud throughout the album, most notably in the bass drum. This of course leads me to the absence of a bass part. Either it's being drowned out by the relentless bass drum, or it is doubling a rhythm guitar part and becomes unnoticeable.

But the album does contain some genuine greatness. "Creating God" and "Higher" are standouts and the album ends with "Exist", a fifteen and a half minute epic culminating in a monologue delivered by Neil DeGrasse Tyson! It's easily the band's most complex and, perhaps, one of their best. It is explicitly flawed, but nothing that a journey through tmie and space can't fix.