Remember Avenged Sevenfold? They’re still one of the few mass-appeal bands embraced by both active rock and metal fans, they just opened up for one of Metallica’s few headlining shows this year, and you’ll be able to catch them at some festivals this year (some of which you can win tickets to). However, their last album came out in 2013, and they began 2016 by suing to get off of their label. In a recent interview with Loudwire, Frontman M. Shadows repeated that the main reason they left Warner Bros. is that everyone in the upper regime when they signed to the label wasn’t there any more. In addition, he adds that the lawsuit hasn’t been resolved yet.

“There hasn’t been a resolution with that. I saw a thing on, I think it was another website was saying that what we had said was not true about the reason we left. That report is not true. We left because every single person at the label, not every single person, the radio department is still intact. But the people that signed us, the A&R people, all the people that had to do with the high up at the company didn’t know who Avenged Sevenfold was or cared at this point. So we had to leave.

It had nothing to do with anything other than if you’re at a place where they don’t care about your band, then you have to do somewhere where they do care about your band. So, as labels start morphing and changing over time, you have to do what’s best for you and that’s the main reason we left. For us, it’s about finding a home that care about rock music and they care about Avenged Sevenfold and want to further our career as we try to push through this thing.”

While Shadows wouldn’t give a timeline for when new music will be out from the band, he adds that they’re working on some, and new drummer Brooks Wackerman is taking an active part in the writing and playing:

“The newest thing I can say is that having Brooks in the band, we are definitely utilizing him, we are not just saying, ‘Hey dude you’re a hired guy,’ because he’s not. He is part of the band and we wanted to write it with him, we wanted to feel him out and that is what we have done. It’s going to be exciting and I think a lot of people are wondering if the band’s going to write a record and make Brooks play on it. It’s not the case. We are writing everything together which has been really fun.”

To read the rest of the interview, which also includes talk about the band’s still-unreleased This Is Bat Country DVD, to here.