Band:	Avenged Sevenfold
Album:	Life Is But A Dream...
Style:	Alternative metal, Avantgarde metal, Progressive metal
Release date:	June 2023

01. Game Over
02. Mattel
03. Nobody
04. We Love You
05. Cosmic
06. Beautiful Morning
07. Easier
08. G
09. (O)rdinary
10. (D)eath
11. Life Is But A Dream…

Considering where they were a decade ago, Avenged Sevenfold have certainly had one of the more intriguing career trajectories of the 2000s mainstream metal icon bands.

Of all the bands I became heavily infatuated with during my late teens, Avenged Sevenfold have suffered one of the sharpest declines in my listening attention; 3 albums in the top 40 of my “all-time top 100” list I made when joining the site was a good haul, but even that represented a significant decline from where those records would have ranked a year prior, and by now, I barely find the time or inclination to listen to them at all. A sharp fall from grace, and one not really helped by the creative nadir that was 2013’s Hail To The King, but around the time that their peers in Trivium were pulling themselves out of their own slump with The Sin And The Sentence, Avenged Sevenfold shocked fans and naysayers alike with 2016’s The Stage, an alarmingly successful pivot into progressive metal and concept albums. Their follow-up to this release has a been a long time brewing, but the end result is one that shows the Californians to be in an even more adventurous mood.

While The Stage was the band’s progressive metal venture (if we overlook how progressive City Of Evil, and arguably even Waking The Fallen, were), some outlets have labelled Life Is But A Dream... as being outright avant-garde. It’s a classification I don’t really agree with, but one can at the very least respect the degree of their eclecticism on this release, which ventures all the way into funky RnB on “(O)rdinary”, a track that Nightlife could have conceivably recorded. Still, there’s definitely a progressive metal element that remains here, not least during the Dream Theater-esque opening to “G”.

Life Is But A Dream... is an odd album, and it’s one that’s caused some polarizing opinions; while the album thread here features an impressive number of 8+ scores, it’s certainly also had its naysayers. Like with many such albums, I find myself planted in the middle in a place of ambivalence. I revisited The Stage for the first time in a while recently, and I was impressed by how well it stood up to my memories of it. While I applaud Avenged Sevenfold for their boldness in using that record as a diving board from which to jump to even more explorative waters, not all of it works for me. Having said that, there’s definitely material here that grips me too.

To start off with the positives, I must look first to what I consider to be, by quite a large margin, the highlight of the record in “Cosmic”. The longest and proggiest song here, it’s a multi-faceted track that starts quietly, shifts into a lively solo, and advances into a gloriously melodic second half that turns positively triumphant near the end; the cyber-vocals trading off with M Shadows’ normal voice, as Brooks Wackerman goes wild beneath on the drumkit, it’s quite a delightful sound. “Easier” in some ways feels like an abridged version of “Cosmic”, opening with the same angelic keyboards and robo-vocals, but it ultimately pivots more towards the muscular alt-metal sound that overall represents the core sound of Life Is But A Dream..., yet in its sub-4-minute runtime it still finds time for another uplifting solo.

While talking about the robotic effects on the vocals on these songs, this might be a good point to touch upon what is probably the most divisive element of Life Is But A Dream..., Shadows’ vocals. He’s done a lot of work to repair his voice after damage he sustained in 2018, but there is still a knock-on impact to his voice. The robotic effects on the aforementioned tracks and autotune on ‘(O)rdinary’ are interesting approaches, but it’s more his voice elsewhere that has drawn attention. I find myself mixed on it; as someone with a lot of nostalgia for their early albums, I still find Shadows’ voice inherently charming, but I do have to admit there’s definitely moments, such as the chorus of “Beautiful Morning”, that I find to be a bit underwhelming due to the delivery. It also doesn’t help the clean moments in “Mattel”, a song I otherwise enjoy through its dirty grooves and sweet keyboard solo, but which I find myself turned off to during the choruses.

Beyond the vocals, I do find this record to be a bit of a mixed bag musically, in a way that prevents me embracing it despite my appreciation for their ambition. The album’s early stretch is a peculiar one; on top of my mixed emotions surrounding “Mattel”, I’m also unsure quite where I stand with “Nobody”. On the one hand, the industrial-tinged alt-metal groove to the verses isn’t quite for me, but I do like the electric leads woven into them as they progress, and the solo near the end is right up my street. A track about I’m less divided with my opinions is “We Love You”; from the pounding punky intro with awkward, depthless vocals to the grating turn-of-the-millennium alt-metal verses and horrid chorus, it’s a real duff note of a track for me, one that is thankfully followed immediately by the album’s highlight in “Cosmic”.

I do warm to the album as it progresses; I’ve already mentioned my affection for “Cosmic” and “Easier”, but I do like the convoluted prog intro and elaborate multi-vocalist arrangements on “G”, and as someone who isn’t fond of RnB, I rather dig the funky bass/clean guitar and meandering electronic lines on “(O)rdinary”. I also find the band’s attempts at symphonic arrangements and piano showmanship on the closing duo of “(D)eath” and “Life Is But A Dream...” to be remarkably well executed compared with what I would expect most of their peers to be capable of.

This is a tricky record to work out my feelings on; perhaps I’m inclined to be generous to it because of longstanding nostalgia for Avenged Sevenfold, even if what they’re doing here is a long way from the albums that got me hooked on the group half a lifetime ago. However, while most of the groups that broke through with them in the early 2000s are struggling to recapture former glories or, in the case of Trivium, are having a renaissance that is still recognizable in style to their early successes, I do appreciate the group being as bold in their writing as they have been on the last two records, particularly when thinking back to how bland and unoriginal Hail To The King was. Nevertheless, I still have to recognize that I straight-up just don’t enjoy this album enough to be more than mildly positive about it, and even then “Cosmic” is doing quite a lot of heavy lifting to reach that level.