Avenged Sevenfold previously mentioned that they wanted “flip the script” with their post-release plans for their new album, “The Stage“. That effort nearly arrived in complete secrecy last Friday, October 28th. Just yesterday (October 31st) frontman M. Shadows stated:
“We wanted to not only pour our heart and soul into making the music WE want to make, but we want to give you a different and exciting experience. This includes the merchandise we will be making, pop up stores, tour production, how an album evolves and more.”
The ‘evolve’ line seems quite curious, especially when you take into account what Shadows told Chris Jericho recently on the ‘Talk Is Jericho‘ podcast (hear it here):
“This record is evolving. There are things we’re going to be adding to the record as time goes on, and it’s still going to be part of the record. We don’t want to give out what those songs are, but we have about seven more tracks that will be added on to this as time goes on.”
In a way it almost sounds as though they are planning to go the DLC route a la video games—which when you consider their involvement in the various DLC’s released for ‘Call Of Duty‘ games which they’ve even appeared in—isn’t entirely that crazy sounding.
Essentially new content is released every few months to breathe life into an already released video game, either by paying for a pass and getting access to each new chunk of content as it comes out or buying each content pack individually.
It’s a concept that’s been explored before in a way: Protest The Hero did their own subscription service where a new track was released each month. But it definitely seems like new ground for an artist as high profile as Avenged Sevenfold.
However, what’s setting fans off now in particular is a new piece of art featured on the footer of their official webstore (see below.) As Metal Injection note, in it you can see the eye that previously adorned their digital single for the title track to their latest album, “The Stage“. In the left eye you can see the cover art for the album version of “The Stage“.
This expanded image reveals the other part of the picture, showing off a mysterious image in the previously unseen right eye of the robotic skull. Perhaps there is some mini-ARG afoot? Or maybe people are just looking too far into things, time will tell I guess.
