‘Rings of dust and ice, weightless in the night, there you’ll find me’.
Avenged Sevenfold have always been a go to band for me, they always come up with the goods when I need them most, their awesomeness summed up in ‘Dear God’ and ‘Afterlife’ two songs that reside in my inner most core, in the deepest recesses of my heart, far away from the world, far away from prying eyes.
With the release of their eighth album ‘Life Is But A Dream’ we welcome their unique blend of mixing the harsh tones with the smooth, velvety textures, and perceptive arrangements, allowing the audience to listen and learn. No matter what walls you think you’ve built up, AX7 will find a way in, and you will be thankful for their presence. It is ‘Game Over’ before we even get started as we open with our lives travelling at hyperlight, everything and much more condensed into 3.47 minutes, a neck breaking mechanism setting off a chain of events that will end in tragedy. We take a trip into Toyland next with ‘Mattel’ a sweet yet sinister look into a money spinning world that harbours all that we love and all that we hate, listening to this reminded me of ‘Wind Up Toy’ by Alice Cooper.
Jump on board the chaotic carousel of capitalism with a clever 360 degree VR video, immersive and impactive, it accompanies the track ‘We Love You’ which discusses our desire for the pursuit of happiness and material things, to the detriment of everything else. When there is no soul left, no feeling, no humanity, we have failed as a people.
AX7 are incredibly artistic in their thinking; you can tell in the completed work that they have calculated, cogitated and co -conspired with life and all its trappings and trauma, they ooze happiness and heartache, they engage with the audience no matter what the circumstances.
I’m really enjoying the compositions here; the contrast of the slower frets, speeding up into memorable riffs, ‘Cosmic’ is a great example of this technique. As machines take over our lives, we contemplate the prospect of what would happen if robots could have the same feelings as humans. If they had a soul, human qualities and fragilities, ‘(O)rdinary’ is the vessel that brings these propositions to our already ravaged mental shoreline. There is a very ‘blue da ba di’ feel to the song, which is uplifting and heartfelt, there is an innocence but also a trepidation, a portentous look into the future and what could be.
The entropic and tectonic attributes of life are served up in ‘(D)eath’ as we face the inescapable, our very dignity and value as humans is brought into question. It is more than our hearts can withstand, but it’s enough for AX7 to show their regard, their significance in music, and their sustained and unfaltering worth in our lives. It is an accolade that is covetous, when the band and the fans live and breathe as one.
As I pull the rope up over the tree, dream a little dream of me….
Azra Pathan
Avenged Sevenfold – Life Is But A Dream out now.