In the fifth installment of Avenged Sevenfold's Breakdown Episode series, M. Shadows and Synyster Gates take on "Paradigm" from their 2016 album The Stage. "This was a crazy song because it was pretty much created solely on jamming with Brooks [Wackerman, Avenged's drummer]," says Shadows. "And we liked it so much. It was one of the first times we'd ever written in this way." He mentions the band's tendency toward planning everything out ahead of time, but this track was based more "on feel." Footage of Wackerman constructing intricate, shuffle-based beats follows, highlighting his unique and impressive talents. Shadows and Gates joke about how the obviously virtuosic drummer is "pretty good."
The song apparently did pose some difficulties, as Shadows explains, "This chorus took us forever to write, and I think it was actually a joke!" Gates chimes in, "It was like the second thing we came up with, then we were listening to all of our options and we couldn't figure it out. We were super fucking frustrated." They took a break from writing to work on other parts before returning to complete it.
For The Stage, the band's first record with Wackerman on drums, A7X threw out some of the rules from their previous work, including the importance of matching all the verses within a song. Addressing the cut's surprise disco-esque beat, Shadows recalls the group challenging their own ideas of what their sound should be; indeed, he remembers thinking at the time: "What the fuck are you guys doing?"
Citing groups like Pink Floyd and Queen, the duo talk about how the rawness of the cracking vocals and slightly less polished bits are important to the overall tone of a record such as with The Stage. Gates describes the finished product of their experimentation as "a more pure take." Check out the full video above.
