Dynamics With A Vengeance

When Avenged Sevenfold finally saw the production light in 2013, I honestly thought it was the band going through some kind of mid-life crisis. You know, when a <insert your favorite big market band here> suddenly looses all inspiration and find themselves reevaluating everything and anything in order to get those creative juices flowing again. Regardless, Hail to the King proved that a high dynamic metal record (DR10) could be the best selling album in the nation, landing the top spot on the Billboard chart the very first week it was released. Well King was no fluke, since A7X have done it again by dropping yet another stellar sounding, high dynamic record with The Stage.

Now truth be told, though Hail to the King was indeed a well produced record, it certainly wasn’t a great one (even by A7X standards), and I wouldn’t argue with you. However, The Stage is a different beast altogether, and it not only sounds better than King, but I’d argue it is a solid record in its own right, offering a very nice mix of progressive thrash, hard rock, and yes, metalcore. It’s also the band’s first concept album too, centered around lead vocalist M. Shadow’s fascination with artificial intelligence and our place in the cosmos (hell, Neil deGrasse Tyson even makes a cameo in it so it can’t be all bad!).

Like King, Stage was mixed by Andy Wallace and mastered by Bob Ludwig, two of arguably the best engineers in the world who have both worked with practically every big name in hard rock and heavy metal you can think of. So how does it sound? In a word, spectacular. Just listen to the band’s new drummer, ex-Bad Religion Brooks Wackerman, on the track “Sunny Disposition” to get a sense of what can be achieved when fidelity, not volume, is the driving force behind a recording. His drums sound so alive and thunderous that they alone are a real testament to Wallace’s mix. And Ludwig’s high caliber master makes sure that everyone else is equally accounted for, including the horns section on this track which never gets overshadowed by the guitar driven ruckus that surrounds them.

In terms of just sheer dynamics, listen to the introduction of the track “God Damn” where loud chugging is interspersed between a simple yet understated catchy guitar melody. This section is a great example of how macro dynamics can lend to a song’s overall impact. Another example is how the band crashes in after the keyboard intro of the very proggy finale “Exist.” Again, if this record was hovering around DR6 or lower, this intro wouldn’t nearly make the same aural impact as it does at DR12. With the respect to microdynamics, practically every song on this record is just brimming with energy. I think my favorite track in this regard has got to be “Fermi Paradox” just for its sheer aural diversity.

If you told me a few years ago that A7X would be one of the defacto evangelists for dynamics in metal, I would have thought you were crazy. But the fact is Zacky Vengeance and Co. have released two of the best produced metal records of the last decade – believe it. But more importantly, both King and now Stage show that when a band is put in the right engineering hands, they don’t have to compromise fidelity to sound “metal.” Also, here’s one final thing to consider: I have read this week countless reviews of this album from all the usual suspects and none of them are complaining that this record is too soft or doesn’t sound aggressive enough. The fact is The Stage is going to outsell the overwhelming majority of DR6 mediocrity that came out this year (by large margins too) proving once again that you don’t need volume to sell. You just need great music.