New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Multi-platinum rock band AVENGED SEVENFOLD today released "Mad Hatter" (Warner Bros. Records), a brand-new track written and recorded for Call of Duty:
Black Ops 4, the next highly-anticipated entry to the top-selling franchise scheduled for release on October 12. Download stream here: https://wbr.lnk.to/madhatter
"Mad Hatter" is the fourth consecutive Call of Duty:
Black Ops collaboration between developer Treyarch and
Avenged Sevenfold following "Not Ready To Die (featured in Call Of Duty:
Black Ops) "
Carry On" (Call Of Duty:
Black Ops II) and "Jade Helm" (Call Of Duty:
Black Ops III exclusively).
This Friday,
September 21st, the band will release all four songs on an EP titled
Black Reign (Warner Bros. Records), which can be pre-saved on Spotify
"Mad Hatter" was recorded in LA this past March and co-produced by the band and Joe Barresi, who produced Avenged Sevenfold's critically acclaimed album, The Stage, and its Grammy nominated title track.
"Black Ops 4 looks insane and is something completely new for fans, so we felt that we should take a similar leap with the music and go for something bigger, darker and more cerebral," says
Avenged Sevenfold lead vocalist M. Shadows.
About the "Mad Hatter" creative process,
Shadows says, "Watching the initial trailers and looking at production sketches reminded me of the 'S-Town' podcast and its main protagonist, John B. McLemore, who was rumored to have suffered from mercury poisoning, or Mad Hatter disease. The idea of Mad Hatter and what it does to the brain is as frightening as the images we were shown. So I decided that the lyrics would shadow McLemore's life. The result is a thick-grooved song that's dynamic and has a weightiness to it."
"We have a very deep relationship with the team at Treyarch," he adds. "We're proud to be part of the family and extremely excited for people to enjoy this next chapter and our contribution to it."
"As fans of the game and as world class musicians,
Avenged Sevenfold has demonstrated an innate ability to convey the emotion and raw power of the Call of Duty
Zombies experience," said Jason Blundell,
Director of
Zombies at Treyarch. "We're introducing fans to a new cast of characters in
Black Ops 4 and delivering the biggest
Zombies experience to date. With IX we knew we needed something epic and A7X delivered."
Call of Duty:
Black Ops 4 is published by Activision and developed by Treyarch with additional development support from Raven Software and PC development with Beenox. The title is scheduled for release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC on October 12th.
ACTIVISION, CALL OF DUTY, and CALL OF DUTY BLACK OPS are trademarks of Activision Publishing, Inc. All other trademarks and trade names are the properties of their respective owners
Avenged Sevenfold became one of the world's biggest rock bands by creating a sound that broke through obstacles of language, distance and culture. They raised the stakes and standards for the genre with a string of blockbuster albums, including their 2005 platinum-selling breakthrough, City Of Evil, 2007's platinum-selling
Avenged Sevenfold and two consecutive No. 1's on Billboard's Top 200 Albums chart: 2010's
Nightmare and 2013's Hail To The King. They've achieved Diamond, Platinum and Gold awards for album sales in nearly a dozen countries, racked up over a billion video views and a billion-plus Spotify streams, have consistently been one of the most-played bands on rock radio for over a decade with multiple No. 1 singles, and have headlined arenas and the biggest rock festivals around the globe, amassing a diehard international fan base whose members number in the millions.
Their most recent release, The Stage, is a work of immense scope and ambition tied together by an Artificial Intelligence theme. Inspired by the writings of Carl Sagan and Elon Musk, the album is the band's first thematic release and its epic 15-minute-plus closing track, "Exist," features a guest appearance by award-winning astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson giving a spoken word performance he penned specifically for the album. The album hit No. 1 on Billboard's Rock, Hard Rock and Alternative Albums charts and drew praise from a plethora of outlets, among them Rolling Stone, NME, Q, The Guardian, Guitar World, Metal Hammer, Revolver, Loudwire, Metal Injection, Alternative Press, Drum,
Total Guitar and Classic Rock, with the latter calling it "a metal masterpiece." The album's title track earned the band their first-ever Grammy nomination for "Best Rock Song."
