Rowan Viles
Nothing is more exciting than seeing your favorite musicians in the world walk out onto a dimly lit stage and play the opening notes to one of their hit songs as the crowd erupts with noise. This is the experience that many rock and metal bands give when they tour. Now tours are more important than ever to create buzz around new albums since music sales have become mostly digital, and in all honesty, rock and metal does not sell like it used to. Bands that made names for themselves before records and CDs became obsolete have to tour to promote their new albums and make money. After COVID 19 shut all social gatherings down for over a year, concerts were not an option anymore thus halting new album production. One band, in particular, Avenged Sevenfold, has not released a studio album since 2016, have finally started to commit to rock and metal festivals for the summer of 2022 implying that they will be releasing an album sometime before then.
Avenged Sevenfold is an American heavy metal band from Orange County, California. They became very big in the early to mid 2000s and have amassed a massive fan base. Their most recent album “The Stage” (released in 2016) was a surprise release with no marketing or touring to create interest and excitement, but this resulted in The Stage being one of Avenged Sevenfold’s worst selling albums to date. Their previous 4 albums have sold at least 1 million copies whereas The Stage has only sold 170,000. Avenged Sevenfold has commented on this and have stated they’ve learned that in order to sell “metal albums” touring and promotion is absolutely necessary. This being said, Avenged Sevenfold has recently committed to play at Graspop, a legendary metal music festival where the biggest names in metal perform. This has gotten many Avenged fans excited as they now expect to see the long-awaited follow up to the stage sometime before summer of 2022. Not only has Avenged Sevenfold stopped touring over the last 2 years, but they also had to cancel their tours in 2018 and 2019 for their lead vocalist to recover from vocal injuries. Avenged fans have not had anything to look forward to for a very long time and the new tour dates have finally given fans something to get excited about. Other bands like Disturbed and Godsmack have announced tour dates after a hiatus from albums and touring. Of course these are not the only bands that are making a return to the stage, there are many many more who are getting back to touring, and this has gotten many music fans eager to hear new albums and see new live shows from their favorite bands. The summer of 2022 is already stacked with festivals and there are surely more to come making next summer a time to look forward to for any music fan.