Avenged Sevenfold has been working on their new album throughout the pandemic, though they couldn't finish it until everyone could safely get into a room. While it's still not totally clear where the band in terms of progress, vocalist M. Shadows revealed in an interview on the Louder Than Life Festival’s Twitch channel that the record will definitely be out before summer 2022. He also mentioned the band has tours lined up in support of the album.
"The reason we don't say much about the music is because we find that every single word we say about it just gets spun off, and there's no way to describe music; it's, like, 'Oh, it's heavy, it's fast…' What are we gonna say about it?' It's a work of art that we've worked on for a long time, we had a bunch of personal things that we'll explain later… But we're booking shows for next summer, and the record will be out before then."
The new Avenged Sevenfold record will be their first since The Stage in 2016, which Shadows has previously said the record will be nothing like.
"The record sounds nothing like The Stage — it's a completely new direction, and it sounds nothing like anything we've done. That's all I'll say about it: it's over the top, and it's very eclectic and wild."