AVENGED SEVENFOLD's M. Shadows Talks God, Purpose, and Fear

Deep in conversation on the “Artist Friendly With Joel Madden” podcast, the 43-year-old frontman for AVENGED SEVENFOLD, M. Shadows (real name: Matt Sanders), pulled no punches on religion and spirituality. Listen closely to his exact words:

“I’m not religious at all. But I find beauty in no purpose. And I’ve found a lot of positivity in there being no purpose ‘cause I feel like that’s the ultimate freedom. I don’t want to be told what needs to happen. I want to have my own path. And for me, it’s all the simple things we all come back to, and it’s all the things that religion would teach you. It’s love. It’s my family. It’s empathy. It’s trying to further the human conversation. But the difference here is if you said, ‘Matt, does any of it matter?’ I would say, ‘No.’ I would say at the very end, the only reason it matters is ‘cause while you’re here, I don’t like to see suffering… I believe that if you look in a even a five-billion-year time frame when Earth gets wiped out, I believe nothing will ever know we were here. It doesn’t matter.”

His conviction runs deep—like an unstoppable current that can’t be tamed (but sure can be discussed). He elaborates:

“I look at it like this. I look at deep history. And there’s no sign of… I mean, you could always always go back, back, back. And the thing that God has going for it is you can always go, ‘Well, what created that?’ And you can always go further back. These are just conversations that go in circles. But let’s say we have a Big Bang… And my question would be, at what point did God start taking notice or care? Was it 2000 years ago? Was he, like, ‘Those guys are kind of apes, but they’re kind of looking like this new thing that I’m into. I’m gonna send Jesus out in a couple thousand years.’ And so there’s a bunch of funny things to me.

“I understand that people that believe in God, now they’ve become more savvy. So, they go, ‘Well, I’m not talking about the guy in the sky. I’m talking about a feeling’ or a consciousness.”

Then comes the gut-level jolt:

“When you wanna know what you feel is the truth and you read as much as you can on it, there’s a shock to the system, which makes me think it’s very much evolutionary and how it’s based in a human. ‘Cause there’s very few things that will make your body chill to the bone. The day that I realized that God was not a feasible option for me, my whole body just shook in fear. And I know that is usually the spot where most people go, ‘Okay, I’m going back. I’m gonna run back to it.’ And so I just was calm and I just continued to read and see if I could find things on either side.

“The belief in God and the comfort in God almost feels like I’m going to carry on in some way or there’s a me, and a lot of the philosophy that that I believe in is that there is no you. That’s what [the AVENGED SEVENFOLD song] ‘Nobody’’s about. Like, there’s no you. You are one with the whole universe. Now, God might have his hands around the whole universe, but at that point, you’re in an ocean.

“So, when I did 5-MeO-DMT, the point of it is to wipe away you… It’s very scary. But one thing that it led me to was, I have this friend, Jeremiah, who became very religious as of late. And we’d argue with each other — back and forth… So when I did 5-MeO, it’s called the ‘God [Molecule]’. And you lose yourself. You don’t exist when you’re on this. And it’s not correct for English words or any words. You actually come back and you can’t even talk. But the next day I saw Jeremiah, and I gave him a hug and I said, ‘You were right all along. He exists.’ And I gave him a hug, ‘cause I realized at that moment it didn’t matter, regardless. And I just said what he believes in and what I experienced was the same thing. He puts a name on it, and I was just one with the universe and with every human that ever existed. And when you listen to ‘Nobody’, the first lyric is ‘I’m a God. I’m awake. I’m the one in everything.’ And it’s because I’m taking those words and I’m changing them to what you think they mean. I don’t think I’m up there making decisions.”

He ties it neatly (in a mind-bending way):

“There’s an old Buddhist saying, ‘Enlightenment is when the wave realizes it’s the ocean.’ It’s when you realize you’re just one with everything and you’re just ebbing and flowing. And so when I realized that, I realized Jeremiah was right all along. What he believes in and what guides him in life, what he calls God is just a technicality. It was all the same thing. And so it was actually an interesting way to come back around to everything.”

Meanwhile, AVENGED SEVENFOLD gears up for more touring—(because, music waits for no existential crisis). Plans for a European tour in June 2025 are on the horizon. The schedule includes big-stage moments at Tons Of Rock, Rock For People, and Release.

They also wrapped a new leg of their “Life Is But A Dream…” North American tour on March 6 at KeyBank Center in Buffalo, featuring milestone firsts in Manchester, Raleigh, and Newark—not to mention a long-awaited return to Des Moines (18 years is a lifetime, in touring terms) and Pittsburgh (15 years is practically pre-iPhone). Their album “Life Is But A Dream…” snagged 36,000 equivalent album units its first week, making it to No. 13 on the Billboard 200.

Past festival appearances? Welcome To Rockville in Daytona, May 2023, marked their first festival set in five years. They’d also taken the stage at AREA15 in Las Vegas, May 2023, for their first show since mid-2018. With over 10 million albums sold and a couple of Billboard chart-toppers (hello, “Nightmare” and “Hail To The King”) under their belt, plus a billion streams, AVENGED SEVENFOLD seems ready to keep rattling (and rewriting) everyone’s sense of purpose—musically or otherwise.

Got a tip for us? Email: [email protected]