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A7X - ‘Life Is But A Dream…’ Review | An intense, emotional Prog Metal thrillride.
73 Plays1 year ago
Avenged Sevenfold have released their first album since 2016. ‘Life Is But A Dream…’ brings together philosophical concepts of existentialism, the meaning of life and the acceptance of death whilst, musically, giving fans a throwback to their normal Heavy Metal music but with a myriad of progressive elements and characteristics added; jazz, classical, electronic, pop, funk and much more! As two big A7X fans, Daria and Laz react to and review the album - giving their thoughts on the music, the lyrics and concept of the album and how it impacted them on an emotional level.
You can also watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7mfJVCp_TzbPNZNMMemJuw
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Transcript
Introduction and Album Overview
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to Mind With Metal. My name is Daria and I'm Laz and together we're a husband and wife team both pro musicians talking all things heavy metal. And today we're bringing you our thoughts on the new Avenged Sevenfold album. Yeah the new Avenged Sevenfold album came out on Friday and we've had the whole weekend to digest it. It's called Life Is But A Dream and we see Avenged Sevenfold taking on a very very new
00:00:34
Speaker
styles in their music and especially the philosophical and lyrical content which I'm sure we'll get to.
Critique of Track Order
00:00:42
Speaker
Do you know what I want to start with? I want to start with my criticisms because there's a lot I love about the album and I really want to sort of pay attention to that. So I'll tell you my criticisms. For those who are familiar with the album, songs one to seven have a very avenged seven-fold feel in the sense that
00:01:00
Speaker
There's heaviness, there's unusualness, but you can still have a very distinct adventure and fold sound with it. Now we get to songs eight and nine, which are called G and Ordinary. And these are the two songs that have, I don't say divide, well, they have divided fans, haven't they? Because we did a listen through with two of our best mates and we just were completely, you know, very shocked when we heard those songs. And when you have songs that are unusual,
00:01:29
Speaker
got to the point where we listened to the first seven songs and when the next songs came on we were just like yeah it was a decline wasn't it emotionally we were just i don't think we were ready for it we knew it was going to be something completely new but i think no one expected that no and what it did is
Emotional Impact of Songs
00:01:48
Speaker
Eventually, I kind of built it up so that it was like, right, we're giving you all the stuff that you want. And there's a massive, you know, I'd say, eventually, I was like my second favorite band ever. And so, I was so, it was so nice to hear that although they're going to be departing from their normal metal core sound, whatever you want to call it, and pushing the boundaries, it was lovely to hear some familiar elements of their music, albeit with the progressive and unusual jazzy electronic elements. But then after the song easier,
00:02:16
Speaker
And I appreciate they're doing a trio of songs, G, O and D, God, G, Ordinary and Death, but it just felt like a weak end to the album. So my criticism is of the track listing and the track order. I would have interspersed, I would have moved G, an ordinary about, I'd have done, actually I've written it here, I'd have gone game over, Mattel, Nobody, We Love You, G.
00:02:40
Speaker
Easier, ordinary, beautiful morning, cosmic, death, life is but a dream. Now that's just me writing down my thoughts and putting them in order of how I'd want it, but for me that just spreads out the Avenged Sevenfoldness.
00:02:55
Speaker
even songs like Cosmic, it's unusual for Avenged because there's not much metal music in there, but we get their melodies, we get their solos, we get the feel of it, but still you spread out the heaviness, the traditional Avenged and you put those unusual ones in between and you can still do the God thing. You put two brackets around the G and you've got your G, you owe a few songs later and then your death afterwards.
Philosophical Themes and Personal Connection
00:03:16
Speaker
So that would be my criticism. The album felt like to someone who really enjoyed the first
00:03:25
Speaker
After we got to track 8, they're good songs. They're well-written, they're interesting, they have unusual quirky elements. I can listen to them. I don't like them as avenged songs, but they're okay. When we get to that moment, it just feels like there's a decline, unfortunately. Yeah, no, I do agree. And upon my first listen, okay, I had three listens and they were all completely different.
00:03:47
Speaker
like completely, you were there. It's like, first listener was just musical, purely musical, musical. And from a musical perspective, I completely agree with you. I do. But I think this is what they were trying to achieve potentially. Yeah. Well, with that shock sort of, of complete, like changing musical direction completely. Yeah. And you think that they're trying to do that in a space of time, which is why they've put them next to each other. Yeah, yeah. So my question,
00:04:17
Speaker
I mean, I would just ask or just make it one stupidly long, 10 minute song. But listen, they have thought so long and hard about this album, which is why I think it's probably appropriate to go onto the content. So the lyrical content of this album has been something that has been
00:04:37
Speaker
Right. The album started taking shape in 2018. That's when they first began preparing and writing and doing things for this. But then obviously we had the pandemic and the lockdowns, which stopped them being able to go and record and do it the way they normally would. So this album has literally been five years in the making. And what we've learned over this is how philosophical of M7 Fold have become about life. Now, what we know is that we know M Shadow who's went and did some things that gave him a new perspective on life and a new outlook on how he
00:05:07
Speaker
viewed the human race and we know Sin joined him. I'm not sure about the other members. But what we did on one of our second listen was that we had all the lyrics up and we also found an article that was written, I say written, that was generated by an AI bot where someone had put all the lyrics in of each song and then it gave us within the context of the album what it thought the song meant or the songs mean. And it was really interesting and fascinating.
00:05:34
Speaker
Now M has said that not all of those interpretations are correct but that could mean that a large amount of them are and looking at the way they've said and reading the lyrics after it kind of makes sense. It does and we'll leave the link right for people to check it out. We'll leave the link for you guys it just what we did was we would read that article yeah the paragraph about the song and then listen to the song with the lyrics and what it's probably one of the most
00:06:02
Speaker
touching of any sevenfold albums I've ever heard because I think...
00:06:09
Speaker
I've been going through stage in my life the last few years where I've been sort of looking at the stuff that they've been talking about, the existentialism, not what's the point of humanity, but what is the meaning of life? You know, it started when I watched a series on Netflix called Cosmos, and they just started to understand, and funnily enough, the end of their last album, The Stage, had Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is the host of Cosmos, doing a little outro monologue. And that's when I just started questioning, you know, we're so small and insignificant in this world. You know, my time on earth is just a tiny, tiny fraction
00:06:39
Speaker
of Earth's life, let alone our galaxy's life, the universe's life. And it's just, it's hard to wrap your head around that. It's quite a philosophical thing to actually think, well, you know, you can earn all the money in the world on this planet. And overall, you still won't mean much. Because in the 5000 years, it's not going to matter how much you earned or what you did as a job or this, that. So it's a hard thing to get your head around. And for them to have summed up
00:07:06
Speaker
What I'm saying is I largely agree and I see where they're coming from with a lot of lyrics. So for them to have summed up a lot of my thoughts on life in an album in such a fantastic way lyrically, as well as delivering it musically, I thought it was stunning. I really, really took away from that lyric reading listening session. It really hit me in songs like Death. I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried during Death because the journey that the album had taken me on
00:07:36
Speaker
quite the questioning of life, the existentialism. And the point of the last song, Death, is that we face all these hardships in life. And is death a form of relief for some of those people? Now, some have mentioned suicide and how the song literally depicts a man or a person killing himself and jumping off the edge. But I don't think they interpreted it. I don't think it was meant to be interpreted like that. And I think it's just,
00:08:04
Speaker
It is a fascinating end and a fascinating philosophical discussion and death just left me in pieces.
Musical Evolution and Style
00:08:10
Speaker
And not only that, but the quality of the song. We'll get onto the music in a bit. How did the lyrics affect you?
00:08:16
Speaker
Well, you know, you can know it's like I'm not saying much today and there's a reason for it. Like I'm still, I'm processing this. This is going to be a few months of processing. So at first, during the musical listen per se, the first ever listen, I was just focusing on the music really. I didn't really think about the lyrics, didn't really think about the meanings of it and stuff. And then when yesterday I listened to it and was reading the lyrics as I go along,
00:08:44
Speaker
Oh my goodness, I just, I was just, I was just broken. Like that really hit me hard. And I told you, didn't I? Because this is what I've been thinking about as well. Just our, you know, our existence, my existence, you know, as a human being and all the meaning of it. And I think I wasn't,
00:09:08
Speaker
ready per se to be thrown into it so hard by Avenged Seven Falls. I think what you said yesterday is that you and me both shared this journey of questioning this stuff but I started it about a few years earlier than you. So we both got to the album, so I'm here in Dashes there and you said this is when you did the lyric list and you're like this is
00:09:30
Speaker
so depressing and i said no i find this comforting because you were there because i'm further along in that philosophical discussion in my mind and you were like i'm not there yeah and the life of a dream just accelerated you they just sped it up for me and i wasn't ready per se i'm not saying like oh vegetable what have you done no it's just like i'm grateful almost for it it's just painful you know and
00:09:58
Speaker
Oh God, sounds like cosmic. I can't talk about it without my voice breaking. It's so emotional. I think the thing behind cosmic was that despite the fact that, you know, throughout the lyrics, they were looking at negative aspects of things, you know, death, materialism, wanting to be normal, wanting to not suffer, cosmic looked at the positive side, cosmic looked at love as an eternal... I'll stop.
00:10:26
Speaker
Love looks at love as an eternal feeling that can last through the ages and that's why it's such a hard-hitting song I think isn't it? But that's what we came up with and that's what we've consumed the lyrics of this album as but now let's move on to the music. So musically we are hearing a very different side to Avenge Sevenfold. We know from there
00:10:50
Speaker
2016, from their 2016 album The Stage. They were starting to incorporate some progressive elements into their music, you know songs like Sunny Disposition. We started hearing really dissonant choruses with horns and brass sections coming in,
Analysis of the 'God Trilogy' Songs
00:11:04
Speaker
and the song exists. We heard a lot of synth and keyboards being played over what we normally would expect to hear guitars and bass.
00:11:11
Speaker
Life is But a Dream took this to a whole other level, didn't it? Not only in instrumentation, you know, because you've got song, you know, like we said, Death. Death was just like a Frank Sinatra, an ode to Frank Sinatra. Stunning orchestration. For those who don't know, Frank Sinatra was obviously a jazz singer. And in the middle of his career, he was playing jazz music with big bands and horns and everything. But then towards the end of his career, he started to play with orchestras.
00:11:40
Speaker
And the orchestras might have been playing jazz progressions, but it wouldn't necessarily be jazz instruments. And so death is just a stunning, stunning orchestral composition where M shows his voice is just floating like a clown on top of that beautiful orchestration.
00:11:59
Speaker
And then in that song, Death, that the part where it goes very loud and dissonant and dark, just a complete contrast to the beautiful chords and melodies you're hearing earlier. And this is Avenged Sevenfold. This is a metal band who have just composed this beautifully orchestrated piece. But we're not going to get too deep into every song. I just, I have to, yeah, I still like Death. It is pretty special. But we heard lots of songs where there was lots of section changes. You go from that heavy, you know, Game Over and Mattel.
00:12:28
Speaker
you've got really heavy parts to start off with and then they drop a bit and then they sometimes go into the soft you know the Mattel chorus it's like I know it might seem and it's the electric piano which you should never expect I felt like this was sort of like we were watching a show it was like a musical with the you know because you imagine you know you hear musicals where you have all the chorus all the cast singing the main verse and the chorus and then suddenly it drops down it's just one character
00:12:53
Speaker
Yeah, well, it was actually... musical is something I definitely agree with because we do have a story here. It's a concept album. There's a huge meaning behind this. There's a huge story behind this.
00:13:06
Speaker
and they're taking us on a journey like i don't think of this as just a bunch of songs put together by a band no that's not it for me anymore like yesterday my world has changed like honestly i know it sounds really like really cheesy and all but it's true and it's gonna take some time and you guys i think you should really like just just trust me on this just
00:13:31
Speaker
get this article that we're going to link you know we're going to leave the link below. Yeah don't say it for gospel it might not be true it might not be how they did it but it really resonated with us. It's a reference point and something for you to think about and read about the song then listen to like read the lyrics like it really changes it all it changes the whole experience. Yeah it's a big experience.
00:13:53
Speaker
The next thing I want to talk about musically was, you know, I said at the start to us, it felt like a decline at the end of the album, but you've got that God trilogy, G, Ordinary and Death. Now we're hearing, we've already described Death and how unusual that is. You know, we know Avenge loved to dabble in their classical stuff with a little piece of heaven. Acid Rain had a nice bit of orchestration as well. But G was probably the most out there song they've ever written.
00:14:18
Speaker
You've got an intro that was like some Frank Zappa thing, you know, very avant-garde, jazzy, unison, off-beat syncopated hits, but then descends down into another, in my opinion, Frank Zappa riff, the song, I'm the Slime, comes to mind. Yeah, that's a good one. And then it just felt really unusual, didn't it? And then you've got the female vocals for the chorus, and then that, or no, the pre-chorus, I think, and that unusual candy.
00:14:46
Speaker
just progressions and melodies that you wouldn't normally associate with avenge very out there and very different but if we sort of if we don't think about this song being composed by a metal band just think of it as a song i actually quite enjoyed it i did and i don't like frank zappa
00:15:07
Speaker
And I really enjoyed that. I can listen to it, I can get through it. Yeah, I don't mind it that much. And do you know what changed it for me? Because I didn't like it on the first list, like at all. Again, the lyrics, the meaning changed it. I was like, it completely resonates with me. Well, they said it was the AI thing, said it was a satirical piece of the lyrics being the singer taking the form of God and sort of, you know, the I am the man, six days of
00:15:35
Speaker
Beep. We're a wave of my hand. So, you know, we're getting the idea of this satirical piece of a divine being, of a deity, of God, and how he or she manipulated the world. I'm not entirely sure in that sense. We then move on to Ordinary, which took us all by surprise. And all four of us, last two and our two best mates, we were just like, no, thank you. And to an extent, I still feel this way. I don't like it as an Avenged song. Now as a pop song,
00:16:05
Speaker
It ticks boxes, lovely melody, very good production, funky, easy listening guitars. But again, the lyrics of this song made us interpret it differently. We get this feeling, and again, we're referencing this AI thing. We're not taking it as this is what the song is about, but it really resonated with us, and we were able to connect the lyrics and the AI thing, plus interviews with them, shadows, and kind of form our own meaning.
00:16:32
Speaker
It's like this character, not the main character of the album, but a character is wanting to be human and wanting to experience, despite all the hardships we have in human life, there is still the want to be challenged and to go through these hardships so that you see how you can, do you self-destruct? Do you go down a path of self-destruction or do you thrive and do you come out of it the better? And I think that having this lyrical content
00:16:59
Speaker
It justified the song being a standard three-minute pop song because everything else in the album is extraordinary. It's unusual. It's special. It's unlike music we've heard. So the song ordinary is just a three-minute pop song.
Conceptual Journey and Narrative
00:17:13
Speaker
And then the production makes sense also. Yeah, with the electronic vocals. So again, I still don't like it, but I get it as a part of the album. As a part of the concept that they said. And as a part of the God trilogy, the three most unusual seven-fold songs we've probably ever heard.
00:17:29
Speaker
a Frank Zappa avant-garde progressive rock thing to a Daft Punk pop song to a Frank Sinatra heartfelt ending. The God trilogy is there and they definitely intended it to be the most unusual and quirky and progressive work they've ever done. However, as I said
00:17:54
Speaker
O in brackets, ordinary, D in brackets, death. And you could have split it up amongst the album and it's still for me would have worked, but you would have spread the other elements, the parts we liked about the album in a sort of consistent quality way. So now we thought we'd talk about just, you know, our general thoughts on the album as a listener. So what did you think of the album? What are your favorite songs? What did you like about it? Well, I really loved and I respect
00:18:24
Speaker
them for it. I love the level of musicianship. I feel like as musicians they're just like on another level completely now. Completely. Sinister Gates composed and played that final song, Life is But a Dream.
00:18:38
Speaker
That's mind-blowing. I want to play that on the piano. I'm going to find the score and I'm going to learn it. I had no idea he was capable of that level of composition or performance. It's beautiful. And I as a musician myself, I can see the amount of work. The amount of work, it's huge. It's so much.
00:18:56
Speaker
So no, like I can see why it took so many years as well. Well, it feels like it's worth the wait. Absolutely. Because I'm going to be coming back to this album all the time. Now, another huge thing that I loved about it is M shadow's voice. It's just so beautiful. And it seems to me like, again, he's on another level of performing.
00:19:18
Speaker
of storytelling really. Storytelling. Yeah. It wasn't his best vocal performance technically. No, no, no. It's performing. Like it really resonated with me and some of the stuff that some phrases I was just, oh my goodness, I was in tears. I was just gone. And that's partially because of his vocal performance because he made it sound so emotional and it resonated with me. Now, another
00:19:44
Speaker
thing would probably be the changes that you mentioned before like we have this heavy bit then we're going into the electronic bit and it just constantly keeps you on your toes I liked that I thought that was interesting it was new it was not something you'd expect
00:20:04
Speaker
from avenge like to me I didn't expect that at all like I didn't expect any of it and that was absolutely beautiful and they've contributed now I'm always gonna remember that life is my dream contributed to my sort of philosophical um I don't know what you call it? Awakening, reckoning, just my journey as a human being and my soul journey you know that
00:20:31
Speaker
Yeah, that is a huge deal. And my favourite songs would be Cosmic, Easier, Nobody. I love that song. Mattel. See, I like so many and I really love the piano piece as well. Yeah, what about you? I think, and recently Bias seriously considered, I think it's a masterpiece. I think it is
00:20:59
Speaker
And I don't even care that I don't like two of the songs. And it's not that I can repeat. It's not I don't like them. It's that they're just not avenge songs to me. But I get why they're there. I get why they're there. I get what they're representing as part of the album. I just want to know what was going through their heads. I want I'm going to tweet M shadows today. And I'm going to ask you, is there any footage you guys are going to release from the sessions? Because I'd be so interested just to see who was involved in the
00:21:31
Speaker
I'm so fascinated by how they've got this out and how they've got each of the songs to the final point. I just want to be there. I want it to be there. I want to know what it was like. There's enough old of any sevenfold stuff in here to satisfy the city of evil loving fan in need.
00:21:48
Speaker
but there's also enough progressiveness in most of the songs for me to say, wow, I love this new direction. I love what I'm seeing here. In places, there's too much progressiveness. Gee, an ordinary. I don't need to go over it again. But overall, I'm really satisfied with the overall sound that they bought. I feel that we, yeah, I really said it. We've got the strong Avenged Sevenfold new vibes in the first songs. It did plateau with easier and then start to dip, but you know,
00:22:18
Speaker
I think, although it is in essence a concept album, I think I can now play one of these songs and hit random and then play them in any order because they don't really flow one into the other,
Community Reactions and Favorite Tracks
00:22:30
Speaker
do they? There's a couple of bits where the ending builds up and then it kind of goes into the next song, but I think you can just play them in any order.
00:22:39
Speaker
M shadows and sinister gay said that after their experience which led to the inspiration this album that they saw a complete new they saw life in a different way, they saw their existence in a completely different way and I feel
00:22:55
Speaker
that that has fantastically translated into this album because I am now seeing Avenged Sevenfold in a completely different way. They are now far higher in my musical estimations than I ever thought they would reach and what I'm loving is the praise and the approval
00:23:11
Speaker
and how much everyone else is loving the album. We've seen Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater tweet that he thinks this is a sonic masterpiece. And although some Avenged fans are not fully on board with it, we are seeing, you know, I've been on the Prague Metal subreddit all weekend and they are loving this album because it is truly a fantastic work of progressive metal.
00:23:33
Speaker
And I'm just, I'm stunned by the quality of musicianship, the quality of production, the freshness of ideas, the performance of each musician, the composition, the orchestrations of the song. You know, death just hits so special for me. And I'll finish by saying my favorite songs. I love Mattel.
00:23:56
Speaker
I thought Mattel is probably one of the best written Avenged Sevenfold songs ever, again, recently bias considered, but it has a perfect amount of Avenged Sevenfold heaviness with progressive elements sprinkled in.
00:24:12
Speaker
before you end that that that guitar song which is just completely electronified and then that epic ending that to me is a fantastic avenged sevenfold song incorporating everything that they're best at into one five and a half minute song and death is my other favorite one um forget there's no guitars and no drums or no this and that it is a beautiful song that that rendered me completely
00:24:39
Speaker
it hit in a very, very, very special way. Mattel, death and nobody I think would be my three favourites.
00:24:48
Speaker
Thank you so much you guys for watching this video and please do let us know your thoughts on life is but a dream in the comments below. Yeah we saw we put a poll out on our Facebook page which was what love it hate it too weird needs more time and I think it was equally split wasn't it so yeah we're seeing from metal fans some are loving it some don't like it something is too weird some need to give more time for
00:25:11
Speaker
I think our takeaway would be give it time, listen to it in order. If you don't like ordinary, listen to anyway and take in the lyrics because it is part of the journey. Avenged Sevenfold, what a fantastic job. Thank you so much. We're going to be listening a lot more. We may do an even more in-depth one, maybe. But for now, this is our review on Life is But a Dream, so have a mental day. Have a lovely day. We'll see you very soon.