This past summer, Metallica embarked on a massive stadium tour that only few acts can pull off into today's music business. They invited Avenged Sevenfold to open on all the dates, and while Avenged were planning an arena tour of their own, they put it on hold to open for the biggest band in the world.
Blabbermouth reports that during an October 19 event at the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, Avenged Sevenfold were asked about their experience on the tour, and frontman M. Shadows has an interesting theory:
"What you learn is that all the complaining and all the [negativity] online, or in this world, when you actually go to a stadium show, to sell out stadiums, it's required that you have The Black Album. You can play deep cuts all you want — you can play 'Master Of Puppets', this and that, but when they're playing The Black Album songs, every single person there is going crazy. And it's like sixty percent of their audience are casual fans that only have The Black Album, and that's one thing that's never gets reflected by their hardcore fans."
He continued: "To go do stadiums, you have to have a record that's worked at radio, or crossed over at some point into the consciousness of the human collective, and they had that with The Black Album. As much as we heard this and that, people complaining that they want deeper cuts from them — which I get — but when they play The Black Album, they play 'Sad But True', 'Enter Sandman', 'Unforgiven', it's just a different vibe, and you can tell that a lot of their audience are casual fans, which is something they've done and nurtured really well throughout their career.
"A lot of the metal bands that were around when Metallica put out The Black Album, now they're playing clubs, and Metallica is playing stadiums."
I can't exactly disagree with what Shadows is saying. He was clearly there every night and got a good gauge on what tracks the audience reacted to.
And it makes sense. Metallica's Black Album is still selling at least two thousand copies a week, usually outpacing new releases from modern contemporaries. The album is a monster and it's those songs that all Metallica fans, casual and not, are familiar with.
I'm sure Avenged Sevenfold is hopinh some of those casual fans happen to check out A7X's upcoming arena tour.
