This past Friday, Avenged Sevenfold took the music industry by surprise by releasing The Stage, their first album with new label Capitol Records. Of course people knew that a new album was coming for them at some point this year, not the least among them, the band’s former label Warner Bros., who’s currently locked in a legal battle with the band. While it doesn’t look like an end is coming anytime soon, Warner announced that on December 2nd, they’ll be releasing their own new Avenged Sevenfold album, and by that, we mean a two-CD greatest hits compilation that’s being released without the band’s involvement. The Best Of 2005 – 2013 was inspired by the fake Tweet that Chris Jericho put out suggesting that the Avenged album would be out on December 9th, M. Shadows hypothesized to Metal Hammer: 

“They saw the tweet that Chris Jericho put up, assumed the record was coming out December 9, and tried to undercut our sales and confuse casual fans.

“We didn’t find out it was happening until we saw it online. They’re just trying to make a cash grab. The fans will figure it out, it’s a viral world and people will know. Go on Spotify and make a playlist of those songs, it’s easy.”

Shadows says that is the band were still on WB, there’s no way the label would have let them rush-release The Stage like they did. “There’s no way they would let us do this,” he says.