The Stage (album)

Background

In March 2016, Avenged Sevenfold held "March Mania"—a tournament to find the most fan loved Avenged Sevenfold song voted each week by fans. On March 31, 2016, Avenged Sevenfold released a video on their YouTube channel and announced "A Little Piece of Heaven" was the winner, then gave an update on the new album, even giving a small clip of a new song, "Exist". In October 2016, their logo, the Deathbat, was projected on major buildings around the world eventually leading up to the release of the first single entitled "The Stage" along with the music video. Deathbot was also released during this time, a link to a website with only a robot that gives certain answers to questions you may have in regards to the album. It was deathbot who first revealed that on October 27, 2016 Avenged Sevenfold was going to release information on the album. This was later confirmed by the band themselves posting on social media sites that they would perform a "must-see event" on that date and live stream it on their Facebook page in which the band gave a global, 3D, 360-degree, live-streamed virtual reality performance.

Musical style

In interviews prior to the album's release, rhythm guitarist Zacky Vengeance described the album as "pretty much completely aggro". The band continued to experiment with The Stage, "Sunny Disposition" features a section accompanied with brass instruments, "God Damn" is one of the heaviest tracks on the album, and has one of the most aggressive and fast-paced thrash metal riffs. The song also has a melodic bridge led by acoustic guitars, with M. Shadows' aggressive vocal style over it, creating a contrast. "Roman Sky" includes several orchestrated arrangements, similar to the ones throughout various songs appearing on "City of Evil". "Higher" is one of the album's most melodic and progressive tracks, it features a female choir near the end creating a very unusual and atmospheric outro harmonized with synthetizers, piano and a drifting bass line. The band's longest song to date "Exist", in which Neil deGrasse Tyson makes an audio spoken word appearance at the end, which he wrote specifically for the album, showcases the band's further experimentation in progressive metal. Other songs also show elements of thrash metal and progressive metal, with some songs using fast drum patterns, blast beats and rapid riff structure, along with thrash-style shouting at some points. The album also includes an influence from their earlier metalcore style, including metalcore-style riffs and breakdowns, with "Paradigm" going as far as to include screamed vocals. The song "Fermi Paradox" has a black metal influence in the instrumental, with the blast beats and guitar work, but the band chose to put clean vocals over it.

Concept and lyrical themes

The Stage is Avenged Sevenfold's first conceptual album. The album's concept is based on artificial intelligence and self-destruction of society, it englobes a variety of science-driven themes including nuclear warfare ("Sunny Disposition"), a failed NASA test ("Higher"), Giordano Bruno's death sentence ("Roman Sky"), space exploration ("Fermi Paradox"), simulation hypothesis ("Simulation") and religion ("God Damn", "Angels"), all of these themes and events taking place on the same "stage"; the Earth. Overall it aims at the future of mankind taking in consideration the advance of technology, its estrangement and the unpredictability of future regarding life and its long lasting evolution. Lyrical content of the album was inspired by the writings of Carl Sagan and Elon Musk.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, vocalist M. Shadows commented as examples: "The song "Paradigm" talks about nanobots – and how they can potentially be used to cure diseases and help you live forever. But how much of a human being would you be at that point? If you're 70 percent machine and 30 percent human, are you going to lose yourself? Or a song like "Creating God" – computers are getting smarter and smarter, and all of a sudden they're becoming your god; they're so much more intelligent than you, you seem like apes to them, or ants".

The title-track "The Stage" talks about humanity and the way people have treated each other throughout history. It speaks from the perspective of a man growing up and realizing corruption of the world.

Closing track "Exist" was made as the band's approach to sonically represent The Big Bang, with the instrumental part in the first section (0:00-6:55) representing the creation of the universe and the second section (6:56-15:41) of the song representing creation of Earth.

Release and promotion

On October 28, 2016, the album was available for purchase on iTunes and for streaming on Spotify, following the band's live-streamed performance at the rooftop of the Capitol Records Building. Special bundles of the album were also made available on the band's webstore.

The band decided not to announce the album before its release, as vocalist M. Shadows stated "it completely takes away the mystique of the record" in an interview with Rolling Stone. The Stage is the first heavy metal album to be released without promotion, and also the first album in general to be released without promotion in physical formats.

It was also announced on Chris Jericho's podcast "Talk is Jericho" that 7 new songs would be added via streaming services at some point. In a later interview with Kerrang!, the band said that 6 songs are cover songs, while there is one original song that was unfinished for the album.

Reception

The Stage received widespread acclaim from critics, who praised the new progressive style adopted. The album was described as a mix of Iron Maiden's anthemic style and Dream Theater's progressive songwriting. Ultimate Guitar wrote 'with a renewed focus on sonic experimentation, speedy metal riffs, and deeper lyrical themes, Avenged Sevenfold release a very fine record with "The Stage."'

Live in Limbo wrote 'there is so much going on within each song; the more you listen to it the more you appreciate it as you start to pick out little gems that you missed on the previous time listening to it'.

Metal Injection even went on to say that The Stage is a "masterpiece", stating 'with its brilliant composition, vast and strong collection of sounds, this is the Avenged Sevenfold record that shines the brightest amongst the stars. The Stage isn’t just a great step up from their previous work, but an outstanding addition to the halls of metal and rock that will forever be remembered.'

The album was also praised for its dynamic range and mastering quality. Angry Metal-Fi called The Stage "the best sounding metal record of 2016", noting how Avenged Sevenfold managed to break free from the loudness war.

Accolades

"-": denotes an unranked list

Commercial performance

Despite being a surprise release, The Stage debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 with 76,000 units, with 72,000 of that figure being pure album sales. As of March, 2017, the album sold more than 160,000 copies in the US alone.

Track listing

All songs written and composed by Avenged Sevenfold.

Personnel