Avenged Sevenfold have announced they will be entering the studio next month to knock out a new one! Update: Turns out this report was false. Here's all the info. This will be the band's first record with the absolutely mental Brooks Wackerman behind the kit. If the band's contributions to Call of Duty are any indication of the new stuff, then check me off as "stoked." It helps that Avenged Sevenfold has even explicitly come out and said that the new stuff will be "aggro" and generally heavy!
So where does this information come from? A press release about the band's new line of guitars. The announcement of a new record is literally two lines in a release, as if this isn't a bigger deal. But there is more to the story. The band is being sued by their label.
Billboard reports the band has tried to get out of their label contract with Warner Bros., citing the "seven-year rule," where you can only bind somebody to an exclusive deal for seven years max. Here's the official wording:
The “seven-year rule” of the California Labor Code allows parties to leave personal service contracts under certain circumstances after seven years have passed. Upon record industry lobbying, the 70-year-old law was amended in the 1980s to allow record companies to claim lost profits on uncompleted albums. Record companies, though, only have 45 days to do so when an artist exercises the right to terminate.
Naturally, Warner is suing the band for breach of contract. The band's attorney released a statement saying there has been so much turnover at the label, nobody originally involved with the band is there anymore:
“Avenged Sevenfold recently exercised the rights given them by this law and ended its recording agreement with Warner Bros. Records,” the band’s attorney Howard E. King said in a statement. Since the 2004 contract was signed, King says the label “underwent multiple regime changes that led to dramatic turnover at every level of the company, to the point where no one on the current A&R staff has even a nodding relationship with the band.”
To which Warner responded:
The label says the band sent it a letter announcing an intent to leave the contract effective Nov. 25, 2015, but Warners did not receive it until Nov. 30. And even if such notice properly met a so-called “future date certain” requirement, Warner Bros. claims it has invested significant funds in the band’s future releases and has allegedly been led on to believe the agreement would remain effective, thus making the sudden opt-out unfair and a breach of good faith and fair dealing. Furthermore, the lawsuit reveals that the band is obligated to turn in an additional CD/DVD live album, which the label purportedly already funded.
The band contractually owe Warner one more album and it looks like this one is going to court. Update: The band have released a statement. Here's what they said.
