Written and recorded throughout 2016, The Stage was musically different for the band, marking a progressive metal sound. It is Avenged Sevenfold's first concept album, with its main theme being based on artificial intelligence and self-destruction of society. It is the band's longest studio album at 73 minutes and 35 seconds. In addition to being their longest album, The Stage features their longest song to date, "Exist", with a run-time of 15 minutes and 41 seconds.
In interviews prior to the album's release, rhythm guitarist Zacky Vengeance described the album as "pretty much completely aggro". The Stage has been described musically as progressive metal and heavy metal. The band continued to experiment with this album; "Sunny Disposition" features a section accompanied with brass instruments, while "God Damn" was one of the heaviest tracks on the album and has one of the most aggressive and fast-paced thrash metal riffs. The song also had a melodic bridge led by acoustic guitars, with M. Shadows' aggressive vocal style over it, creating a contrast. "Creating God" utilized a D major scale over a D minor progression in order to gave the chorus and solo a unique sound.
"Roman Sky" included several orchestrated arrangements, similar to the ones throughout various songs appearing on City of Evil. "Higher" is one of the album's most melodic and progressive tracks. It features a female choir near the end, creating a very unusual and atmospheric outro harmonized with synthesizers, piano and a drifting bass line. The band's longest song to date, "Exist", in which Neil deGrasse Tyson makes an audio spoken word appearance at the end, which he wrote specifically for the album, showcases the band's further experimentation in progressive metal. Other songs also shown elements of thrash metal and progressive metal, with some songs using fast drum patterns, blast beat and rapid riff structure, along with thrash-style shouting at some points. The album also includes an influence from their earlier metalcore style, including metalcore-style riffs and breakdowns, with "Paradigm" going as far as to include screamed vocals. The song "Fermi Paradox" had a black metal influence in the instrumental, with the blast beats and guitar work, but the band chose to put clean vocals over it.
The Stage was Avenged Sevenfold's first conceptual album (2010's Nightmare was planned to be a concept record, but such plans were nixed following The Rev's death). The album's concept is based on the future, having such themes such as artificial intelligence and self-destruction of society. It includes a variety of science-driven themes including nuclear warfare ("Sunny Disposition"), a failed NASA test ("Higher"), Giordano Bruno's death sentence ("Roman Sky"), space exploration ("Fermi Paradox"), simulation hypothesis ("Simulation") and religion ("God Damn", "Angels"), all of these themes and events taking place on the same "stage": Earth. Thematically, the album deals with mankind's relationship with technology. Lyrical content of the album was inspired by the writings of Carl Sagan.
The title-track "The Stage" talked about humanity and the way people have treated each other throughout history. It speaks from the perspective of a man growing up and realizing corruption of the world. Closing track "Exist" was made as the band's approach to sonically represent The Big Bang, with the instrumental part in the first section (0:00-6:55) representing the creation of the universe and the second section (6:56-15:41) of the song representing the creation of Earth.
No hay comentarios.:
Publicar un comentario