Next year's Graspop Metal Meeting has added a fourth headliner to join Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Aerosmith: the mighty Avenged Sevenfold!
Having spent much of the last few years away from the limelight, Avenged Sevenfold are seemingly gearing up for a massive 2022 by announcing a headline set at next year's Graspop Metal Meeting in Belgium.
The Huntington Beach heroes will perform on Main Stage 1 on the Friday of the huge 25th anniversary edition of the metal weekender (which takes place from June 16-19), joining fellow heavyweights Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Aerosmith.
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A7X are also currently scheduled to play Spain's Resurrection Fest next summer, with frontman M. Shadows confirming that new music will be out before they hit the road.
"The reason we don’t say much about the music is because we find that every single word we say about it just gets spun off, and there’s no way to describe music; it’s like, 'Oh, it’s heavy, it’s fast…’ What are we gonna say about it?" he said in July. "It’s a work of art that we’ve worked on for a long time, we had a bunch of personal things that we’ll explain later… but we’re booking shows for next summer, and the record will be out before then.”
In February 2021, Matt confirmed that the album was "70 per cent” done, with some string players still needing to come in, and mixer Andy Wallace then unable to travel due to COVID.
He also reiterated that it didn’t "make sense” for Avenged to put out new music without touring. "The world has changed,” he said of the pandemic. "Put out a record on Spotify without touring for a rock band, it just doesn’t make sense to us. So we’re gonna wait till everything is back, then we’ll come out with the record, finish it up, and all will be good.”
Late last year, the vocalist told Kerrang! that the new A7X album "sounds nothing like The Stage – it’s a completely new direction, and it sounds nothing like anything we’ve done. That’s all I’ll say about it: it’s over the top, and it’s very eclectic and wild!”
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