I'm going to cash in my brave tokens and say Avenged Sevenfold. I've spent the last few months with the new Gojira, discovering Between the Buried and Me, BEHEMOTH, Mastadon, Sumac, and listening to A LOT of the Animal Crossing: New Leaf OS, but I have to say that nothing has hit me quite like Avenged Sevenfold's The Stage has.
I only preface my post that way because I realize a lot of people look down at the band as "mainstream metal" or "garbage", and it's not quite a deep cut like what I'm sure most of thread will contain.
That being said, I think the album is fantastic. It still sounds like them, so if you weren't a fan before, you probably wont be now, but it's definitely a little more off the beaten path and definitely a more experimental album for them. The fact that portions of certain songs
strongly remind me of Pink Floyd I think says it all.
On top of that, the topic of the album is one that will become more and more relevant with each year. A.I. They've said that they wanted to grow an interest in the topic within their listeners, and hopefully educate, or at least put a little flame in people to educate themselves, and I think that's respectable. It's something that will completely flip our existence around in the coming decades, and we as people should be thinking about this kind of thing now. They even have Neil Degrasse Tyson give a monologue over the end of the album's final track, "Exist", which is supposed to be a musical re-enactment of the big bang.
It's really great to see them come back with such a great piece of work after Hail to the King. I can't say I know what I'd rate the album as a whole, but I will say that if you were a fan of the band post-Unholy Confessions and pre-Hail to the King, it might surprise you.
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