Avenged Sevenfold have announced additional dates for their 2018 North American arena headlining tour, with special guests Breaking Benjamin and Bullet For My Valentine, which will include a performance at Richcraft Live at Canadian Tire Centre on Jan. 21.
The tour will be North America’s introduction to the electrifying Stage spectacle that drew rave reviews across Europe. After the recent 02 Arena shows, the London Evening Standard lauded Avenged Sevenfold as “a global phenomenon” and wrote that the band “specialized in preposterous fun,” calling the show “royally entertaining.” The Guardian ran a four-star review of the show in Glasgow, Scotland, writing, “Underneath retina-scorching screens and a giant cosmic cube broadcasting spiraling starfields, the five-piece methodically discharge booming, arena-filling songs…these industrial assemblages of growing riffs and fret-melting solos have a default minor-key menace, yet the overall atmosphere is surprisingly joyous.” Kerrang! however best summed up Avenged Sevenfold’s new live show – “you’ve never seen anything like it.”
The deluxe version of their critically acclaimed album, The Stage, is available now!. This new edition features seven additional studio songs and four unreleased live tracks recorded during the band’s recent shows at The O2 Arena in London. Among the bonus tracks is the band’s stunning cover of the Pink Floyd classic Wish You Were Here, which was released today and can be heard here, while the companion video can be viewed here.
Lead singer M. Shadows says of Avenged Sevenfold’s version of Wish You Were Here, “This is the song that started us down the rabbit hole with our recent cover recordings. I’ve always loved this song and though I felt it would be impossible to capture the somberness of the original, we approached it with another purpose. There’s a poignancy to the song that seems appropriate with everything going on in the world today. We put a bit of a modern twist on it to reintroduce it at a time when it might help capture what some of us are feeling.”
The deluxe edition is the latest chapter in an innovative album cycle that began 12 months ago when Avenged Sevenfold “surprise-released” The Stage, becoming the first-ever rock band to drop an unannounced album in digital and physical form. The band announced the album’s release to millions of surprised fans who had been watching their live-streamed set from the rooftop of the Capitol Records Tower in Hollywood, Calif. That groundbreaking event saw the quintet give a three-dimensional, 360-degree virtual reality performance that enabled fans around the globe to experience Avenged Sevenfold’s electrifying show as if they were there for this first-of-its-kind immersive event.
Months later, the forward-thinking band announced plans to transform The Stage into an evolving body of work by adding a series of new tracks over the course of several months. Those songs, which began with a scintillating rendition of Mexican folk song Malagueña Salerosa, have been previously unavailable for purchase, but fan demand for the tracks brings the album to its current stage as a deluxe release.
In addition to the album’s original 11 tracks, the deluxe version features A7X’s reimagining of Mr. Bungle’s Retrovertigo, the original track Dose, a cover of Del Shannon’s 1961 No. 1 hit Runaway, the band’s version of The Beach Boys’ 1966 hit God Only Knows and most recently, their rendition of the Rolling Stones’ As Tears Go By. The four concert recordings included on the album are the title track The Stage, Paradigm, Sunny Disposition and God Damn.
Rolling Stone called The Stage “epic and adventurous” and “the most aggressively bonkers music of the quintet’s career” and NME, Q, The Guardian, Guitar World, Metal Hammer, Revolver, Metal Injection, Alternative Press, Drum, Total Guitar and Classic Rock are among the myriad press outlets that lauded the album, with the latter calling it “a metal masterpiece.”
Tickets for the Ottawa show can be purchased by visiting: www.Ticketmaster.ca, www.canadiantirecentre.com, by phone at 1-877-788-FANS; in person at each of the 10 participating Canadian Tire stores in Ottawa as well as the store in Perth, The Sens Store at Carlingwood Mall, Place d’Orléans and in the ByWard Market, Algonquin College, Superior Photo and at the Canadian Tire Centre box office.
Tickets are $59.50, $79.50 and $89.50; reserved seating and general admission (plus CRF and service charges). General admission floor will be standing room only for this show.
AVENGED SEVENFOLD – THE STAGE WORLD TOUR CANADIAN DATES
*All dates, cities and venues below subject to change.
Jan. 19 – Québec City, Vidéotron Centre
Jan. 21 – Ottawa, Richcraft Live at Canadian Tire Centre
Jan. 22 – Hamilton, Ont., FirstOntario Centre
Feb. 12 – Winnipeg, Bell MTS Place
Feb. 14 – Saskatoon, SaskTel Centre
Feb. 15 – Edmonton, Rogers Place
Feb. 17 – Vancouver, PNE Forum
The band has partnered with CID Entertainment to offer VIP Tour Experiences, including access to a VIP-only viewing area, an official signed show setlist, an invitation to the pre-show lounge featuring Avenged Sevenfold memorabilia and an exclusive A7X tour book including never-before-seen photos. For full package details, please visit CID Entertainment.
Both the digital and physical deluxe versions of The Stage can be pre-ordered here. For more information about the tour visit the band’s official website and keep up with Avenged Sevenfold on social media via their Twitter, Facebook and Instagram pages.
About Avenged Sevenfold
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.
