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M. Shadows: “Technology overuse is killing rock and metal”
The Avenged Sevenfold leader talks about the state of modern rock and metal music production.
Image: Jo Hale/Getty Images
Avenged Sevenfold frontman M. Shadows has spoken about the detrimental effects that “technology overuse” has on today’s rock and metal music.
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Discussing the making of Avenged’s new album Life Is But A Dream… on the latest episode of The Ex-Man with Doc Coyle podcast, Shadows says, “There’s a lot of vocoder and things we’re doing on this record. But we’re not using ProTools’ vocoder, right? We brought out the keyboards, we’re singing into stuff, we’re talking [through] the talk box…but I think as you do that stuff and you do all those new, forward-thinking things in an organic way, I think it just has a knack to it that’s very cool.”
“One thing that I think, and I’ve said this on Twitter and you get ‘Old man yelling at the clouds’, I think technology overuse is killing metal and killing rock,” the musician adds.
“Everyone’s using the same samples, they’re using the same tools to fill out the speakers, they’re brickwalling their mixes, the vocals pop and it’s way on top… The normal person that listens to that, they’re like, ‘This just sounds like one straight line of something, but it’s not appealing to me because there’s no dynamic, there’s no this or that, it all sounds the same.’”
“I think that’s why bands like Tool, bands like System, they really stand out because there’s so much dynamic – there’s so much realness happening.”
Shadows continues: “I think there’s a reason why rock has a hard time translating. Some of these songs…I think, like, what would Master Of Puppets sound like if the drums were quantized, everything was filled out on the speakers, everything was perfectly tuned… It just wouldn’t have that same thing that it makes you feel.”