Synyster Gates says new A7X album is “by far the most guitar-centric” the band has done
“To me, this is the first album that does not sound like anything I’ve ever heard before in my life.”
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Strap in as Synyster Gates talks us through the making of Avenged Sevenfold’s latest record Life Is but a Dream… and why he considers it “the most guitar-centric record the band has ever done” — by far.
Speaking in a recent interview with Ernie Ball, the guitarist says of the new album: “Years ahead from this, I’ll probably look back and think ‘Oh, it doesn’t sound as unique as I thought.’ It ’s just like I do with certain records. But a lot of our older records are literally guitar, traditional guitar tones, and things of that nature.”
“To me, this is the first album that does not sound like anything I’ve ever heard before in my life,” Gates explains. “And I think it’s because [of] our sources of inspiration and the time that we had to dial those in and not just jam-pack and force those things into what needs to be eventually at the end of the finish line.
“It needs to be you listening to your music and loving it — loving the fuck out of it.”
“There were endless sources of inspiration in the last five years,” he says. “And that was kind of by design. And because of the time that we had to set up all these different playgrounds, these sonic playgrounds, to really experience and build new scenes that we hadn’t heard before. It’s, by far, the most guitar-centric record that we’ve ever done. By far, leaps and bounds.”
“But ostensibly, it’s not just coming at you with loads of guitar. To me at least, it doesn’t have that aesthetic. To me, it’s deeper. But we were able to get that depth with a lot of fucking guitar. And I’m super proud of that.”
The guitarist adds that at this point in his career, he has “no interest in picking up a guitar just for the sake of writing a record.”
“It has to be like, ‘I don’t know why I walked into my fucking creative room, I don’t know why I’m in my studio right now, I’m just moving and shit’s coming out and I’m pleased.’ That’s it.”