In a new interview with Billboard.com, Avenged Sevenfold frontman M. Shadows has spoken of the band’s emerging plans for their next album. He said of that:

“We’re really excited where our head space is. Just musically we feel like we want to express ourselves with an album and maybe not go drag [“The Stage“] out too much longer. There’s no new songs. We’ll probably talk for a couple months before we even start writing. There’s just so many cool new influences and all these new things we’ve been talking about, sparking us to think about different things outside of the box. I’m sure we’ll throw those ideas around. I already know it’s going to be different and cool, and that’s just exciting for me.” - Advertisement -

Though nothing is set in stone, Shadows thinks the band could begin work on the effort before the year’s end. Before then the band will embark on what he calls a “really big summer tour,” which will hit some of the same markets their summer run with Metallica did earlier this year. Currently the band have this early 2018 North American tour booked.

Meanwhile, the group have debuted a live version of the title track to their latest album “The Stage“, which can be found below. It will appear as one of the bonus tracks on the forthcoming deluxe edition of that album, out this Friday, December 22nd. In addition to live tracks, that set compiles the various covers the band have released over the past year.

For more from Shadows regarding that and their recent Grammy nomination head to Billboard.com.