AVENGED SEVENFOLD's JOHNNY CHRIST On Stage Production For 'Life Is But A Dream…': We Were Able To Take It To Another Level'

At this weekend's Download festival in the United Kingdom, AVENGED SEVENFOLD bassist Johnny Christ spoke to James Wilson-Taylor of Rock Sound magazine about the band's ongoing world tour in support of AVENGED SEVENFOLD's latest album, "Life Is But A Dream…" Written and recorded over the span of four years, it was produced by Joe Barresi and AVENGED SEVENFOLD in Los Angeles and mixed by Andy Wallace in the Poconos, Pennsylvania. Regarding the stage production for AVENGED SEVENFOLD's current run of shows, Johnny said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "I don't think it's too dissimilar to what we do on every album cycle. We like to bring the new album with its imagery and kind of bring somewhat of an immersive experience to the fan, to kind of bring him into more than just the music, the artwork that we put into it. We take time on everything that we do. And maybe that's why we take so long to release albums, but we take a lot of time, we take a lot of pride in it. And the visuals go hand in hand with it. We want it to be an event where you're feeling songs like 'Mattel' — we want you to come into the Barbie world with us. And this one, we have a great production team and we were able to take it to another level, do some stuff differently.'

He continued: "We've done a lot of different productions over the years, and we always try to outdo ourselves in ways and just make it different and more exciting in ways as well. I'm very proud of this cycle and what we've done with our production and being able to bring that life, that light to 'Life Is But A Dream…' And it's been really cool. We use a lot of the artwork from the album, a lot of artwork that we had because we worked with Wes Lang, an amazing artist. That was just a match that you never expect to happen, and then it does, and you're, like, 'Oh, this is just too good, too good.' So shoutout to Wes on that. But, yeah, a lot of that imagery, bringing in those songs… We're gonna be playing quite a few of 'em [at Download]. We're leaning heavy on it, man.'

Johnny added: "We're very happy with our album [that's] out right now. It's different. And we like that. We've always tried to — not 'tried to be'; we've always been the different band out here. And I think this is just the new installment of that. And I'm really excited for everyone here at a festival setting to get that, 'cause you don't always get that in a festival. Everyone comes out and does the big party, which we've done too. We love the big party — nothing against it — but there's a different imagery that we have going right now. And [we're] taking a piece of that here and then hopefully, in the next time, we'll be back in the arenas to give the real immersive experience."

AVENGED SEVENFOLD launched the 2024 leg of the "Life Is But A Dream…" North American tour on March 6 at KeyBank Center in Buffalo, New York. The band's 2024 run included AVENGED SEVENFOLD's first-ever performances in Manchester, New Hampshire; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Newark. The group performed in Des Moines, Iowa for the first time in 18 years; Cleveland, Ohio; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for the first time in 15 years.

AVENGED SEVENFOLD has been touring in support of "Life Is But A Dream…", which sold 36,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in its first week of release to land at position No. 13 on the Billboard 200 chart.

AVENGED SEVENFOLD made its first festival appearance in five years on May 19, 2023 at Welcome To Rockville at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida.

AVENGED SEVENFOLD's first concert since June 2018 took place on May 12, 2023 at AREA15 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

To date, AVENGED SEVENFOLD has sold over 10 million albums worldwide and earned two consecutive No. 1 albums on Billboard's Top 200 Albums chart (2010's "Nightmare" and 2013's "Hail To The King") to go along with over a billion video views and a billion-plus Spotify streams, as well as multiple No. 1 singles on rock radio.