“It was all you deserved anyway.”
By the time my first listen of Life Is But A Dream… closed out, I was left with far more questions than answers. The heavy metal veterans’ first outing in close to seven years, it’s quite the statement to make. A monstrous, sprawling, experimental metal epic—one that spans influences from all across the genre spectrum, and one that will almost certainly piss off long-time fans in a way that I am sure the band are expecting—Life Is But A Dream… proves the mainstays aren’t to be pigeonholed.
Truthfully, Life Is But A Dream… feels like an album created with very little regard for commercial viability, and it’s all the better for it. There is an intention here that was somewhat present on the band’s last full length, 2016’s The Stage, of expansion into the worlds of the weird, the strange and certainly the progressive. That intention is fully realised here, almost to a fault, as Life Is But A Dream… proves to be Avenged Sevenfold’s most artistically bold record to date.
If anything is clear on Life Is But A Dream…, and admittedly not much is, it’s that this record is a product of Avenged Sevenfold’s influences, through and through. Not so much the classic heavy metal bands that the band often looked to on their earlier work, but more that of their modern influences—contemporaries who the band clearly look up now on a musical, and broader artistic level. These influences can be traced back on almost each and every song here, and while one could decry that as having a lack of originality, the way in which these influences converge with the already-existing notion of what “Avenged Sevenfold” is makes for a wholly unique experience.
Perhaps the greatest exemplar of the band’s songwriting ethos comes on the second teaser track, and fourth cut on the album tracklist, “We Love You”. Jumping with reckless abandon between Mr. Bungle-esque alt-metal and dream-pop sections laden with verb, Metallica-goes-hardcore crossover thrash violence, and a party-hearty call-and-response that wouldn’t be out of place on a Rammstein number, “We Love You” is a fever-dream thrillride of a track that yearns to be heard multiple times to truly understand its intricacies. It’s this songwriting attitude that’s carried across Life Is But A Dream…, too, with each song containing vastly different styles and influences, even between individual sections of said tracks.
Furthering this notion, mid-album highlight “Beautiful Morning” by contrast feels like a meeting of worlds between an Alice In Chains, or perhaps Helmet-inspired brand of grunge, and a melodic break that wouldn’t be out of place on Ween’s Quebec. It’s this strange, obtuse philosophy the band takes to their concoction of sounds that makes Life Is But A Dream… such an engaging listen, though. No two moments are the same, and the influences are so wide-reaching and varied that you can’t help but laud a band as seasoned as Avenged Sevenfold for letting loose in such a colossal way, especially so late into their career.
The synthy, proggy and sonically rich dynamic of the album’s three-part epic of “G”, “(O)rdinary” and “(D)eath” make for one of the record’s most wildly out-there moments, too. Evoking elements of Rush-esque prog, alongside soul-adjacent vocals in the former of the three, and some deeply rich orchestral arrangements toward the tail end of the run give this sense that, despite how unhinged this may all seem, Avenged Sevenfold might know exactly what they’re doing here. Dancing effortlessly between Daft Punk, as well as the aforementioned Mr. Bungle and Rush-inspired soundscapes, these three tracks left me more speechless than any others here—less out of how unabashedly wild they are, though that certainly contributes, but more how well they pull these sounds off.
The sound design across this album becomes a highlight around this injunction, too, as well as with earlier cut “Beautiful Morning”. Cacophonous swells of noise provide transitional points between starkly different arrangements, textural keys and synths rear their heads, and subtle shifts in production provide more appropriate backings for the genre-averse sections on display.
Across tracks like this and earlier prog rock epic “Cosmic”, too, the band’s at-once head-scratching notion to be influenced by Kanye West seem to prove apt. Around its conclusion, “Cosmic” harbours a progression that feels similar in composition and energy to that of the apex of West’s masterwork “Runaway”, and while that may sound like a bold statement on paper, it’s one that I see as wholly true.
Admittedly, one of the stranger, and very few unsuccessful compositional choices across Life Is But A Dream… lies in the vocal mixing. While certainly intentioned in their style, the starkly different mixing styles utilised across the record lend to a sense of lacking consistency in quality. The performances themselves are often stellar, with M. Shadows providing his most varied vocal performance to date, but the constant darting between minimal processing, in-your-face distortion and other contrasting styles less well-realised. These, alongside strange effects such as modulation and ill-fitting reverb end up being my one glaring note for Life Is But A Dream… on a compositional level, as much of the album’s wide variety tends to play to its strengths, rather than the contrary as seen here.
I can’t stress enough just how good Shadows often sounds here, though. Pulling out some of his most left-field harmonies and melodies to date, as well as reintroducing screaming as a core vocal style for the first time in over a decade give his performance so much dynamic power here, and only serve to bolster the already-varied and sprawling style across the instrumental and production side of Life Is But A Dream….
Further, something that’s immediately apparent from the opening tracks of Life Is But A Dream…, as too it was on The Stage, is that drummer Brooks Wackerman is the perfect fit for this group. While I found previous drummer Arin Illejay’s style to be a tad too safe in comparison to the heights of the band’s previous drummers in The Rev and Mike Portnoy, the punk influence that Wackerman carries over from his stint as Bad Religion’s longtime percussionist proves invaluable.
Truthfully, it’s a challenge to examine Life Is But A Dream… as an Avenged Sevenfold project. To imagine a band of their calibre and pedigree within a certain range of sounds branching so far out, so deep into their career, and sticking the landing with such prowess is beyond laudable. It’s not all perfect, but for everything that doesn’t work on Life Is But A Dream…, it feels as though there are ten things that do. Almost certainly, too, those things shouldn’t. A feverish blend of such broad influences as Mr. Bungle, Alice In Chains, Frank Zappa, Daft Punk, Rush, Ween and Kanye West, Life Is But A Dream… is far more than a heavy metal record, and by its conclusion proves to be a confident, electrifying and gratifying exploration of the passion this band holds for the art they consume and create.
8.5/10
Life Is But A Dream… is due for release this Friday, June 2nd, via Warner Records. You can find pre-orders for the album here.