It’s coming up to seven years since Avenged Sevenfold released their last album, 2016’s The Stage. That record saw the Huntington Beach band entirely upending their own formula, from the eight-minute, prog metal-adjacent title track to the over-arching sci-fi-themed concept, complete with saxophones and a cameo from space boffin Neil deGrasse Tyson, to the fact that the whole album was suddenly dropped without any prior warning.