Around 2016, after releasing five back-to-back platinum albums, two of which were US No 1 hits, Avenged Sevenfold’s frontman M Shadows was having the kind of mild existential crisis where you ponder your place in the universe. “I was trying to solidify my worldview,” he says. “Along the way, I read some books by Albert Camus, things like The Stranger, and that introduced me to ideas like absurdism and meaninglessness, which led me into deep psychedelic exploration with 5-MeO-DMT and doing that with a shaman, going deep into it.”
After experimenting with the famously intense hallucinogen, his existential crisis massively deepened for six months. “It was the worst thing in my life but I’m so grateful for it now. I couldn’t go out anywhere, go to the gym, eat meat or drink alcohol. I couldn’t do anything, I was so locked in [my own head]. I’d just walk the streets and contemplate suicide. Then one day, I realised: this is freedom! There is no meaning. I can do whatever I want. Suddenly, it just clicked.”
