Avenged Sevenfold - Dark Publications

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Similar Items:

•	City of Evil
•	Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces
•	Indestructible
•	Waking the Fallen
•	Scream Aim Fire

Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
We made this record for the 18- to 25- year-old kid who just wants to blast some heavy shit out his window something you can groove to and rock out to that means something. There s no glitz or glamor just a heavy-hitting record that encompasses all of Avenged Sevenfold. It s a record that new fans
and old fans will love. M. Shadows
The debut major-label album from
Avenged Sevenfold (aka A7X), 2005's
City Of Evil, earned gold (817,640 copies sold to date), shot to Top 30 Pop and won the band Best New Artist at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards. For the selftitled follow-up, the band gets even harder and heavier. Avenged Sevenfold, the group's first album to be self-produced, is head-banging heaven.

Amazon.com
Avenged Sevenfold's fourth full-length is little more than a workaday hard rock record replete with songs tailored for the innards of hockey rinks and basketball arenas. The nu-metal bellowing and angst-filled posturing quickly wear thin, rendering tracks such as "Scream" and "Afterlife," and the opening "Critical Acclaim," nearly interminable. Sure, "Gunslinger," "A Little Piece of Heaven," and "Dear God" offer some variation and each holds a few interesting ideas but there's nothing here that hasn't already been tried by My Chemical Romance, Nightwish, Buckcherry, or Bon Jovi. A credible but ultimately failed effort. --Jedd Beaudoin

Customer Reviews: Read 101 more reviews...

3 out of 5 stars

The Fallen Are Turning In Their Graves October 31, 2007
29 out of 47 found this review helpful

Three CDs ago, Avenged Sevenfold woke the dead with a screaming Heavy Metal album called Waking the Fallen. In 2005 they put out a much more melodic Metal album with City of Evil, and I'd argue that City was the best Rock release of that year.

This year we get A7X's self titled, self produced disk. And anyone that was a big fan of Waking the Fallen will be 'gravely' disappointed. If you liked City of Evil, this disk is more on par with that, but this disk lacks the abundance of stand-out tracks that City had.

This self titled disk starts out with a big F-U to anyone that doesn't support the war in Iraq, and that's risky business for an entertainment entity whose sales may have once been comprised of a lot of the people that are being given (to put it lightly) the Bronx Cheer in the song Critical Acclaim.

The second song is the only song even close to the A7X of Waking the Fallen (and the earlier years). Scream (track 3), Afterlife (track 4) and Unbound (track 6) are most reminiscent of the melodic rockers that densely populated City of Evil. And the most interesting composition...and I do mean composition...is A Little Piece of Heaven; it's an operatic, carnival-esque, strange, spooky song. There are also a couple of ballads and one song that's called Lost that's just...well...lost on this CD with its electric vocalizations.

Unlike City of Evil where each song was over 5 minutes long, almost every song on this 10 track disk is under or right at the 5 minute mark (with the exception of the last two tracks).

All of the songs are clearly sung by Shadows. The music is hard. There's spectacular drumming by TheRev. There's head banging, melodic, Iron Maiden-ish guitar solos and driving bass. But as I said earlier, none of the 10 tracks immediately jump out at you.

While City of Evil brought a refreshing, somewhat newish sound to Metal fans, A7X's Avenged Sevenfold is a step backwards...not bad...but definitely a step backwards. Sorry fans.

2 out of 5 stars

I had a bad feeling about this one... October 30, 2007
13 out of 27 found this review helpful

...and it unfortunately looks like I was right. I absolutely adored and think that City of Evil is one of the best metal albums of all time. It is heavier than hell (with one exception) and just sounds different than any other band. What I don't get is how they took almost the full year to do this thing and it turned out like crap. The only reason I'm giving this thing two stars is A: it's Avenged Sevenfold and B: I give them a whole helluva lot of credit for experimentation. Seriously, they did a lot of experimenting on this album, especially the 9th track. So, I give them credit but this album I'm sorry, but it just blows. Outside of "Critical Acclaim" the rest of the album I just find rather boring.

They need to be very careful now though, because they need to watch out and not go the Blue Oyster Cult way, which is just because you had one "lighter" song doesn't mean you have to go that route for now on. Don't get me wrong, I loved "Seize the Day" but they can only do so many ballads. A7X is best when they are playing really heavy stuff, with great guitar work, vocals and interesting lyrics. This album doesn't have a lot of that. I still say the guitar work is still good but it's not as heavy and I really hate to say this but M. Shadows is the weakest link here. His vocals and lyrics are just plain watered down and sappy. He was the man on City of Evil but here, he just comes off whiney without a whole lot to say.

My recommendation: buy "Critical Acclaim" on itunes and skip the rest. Wait 'till their next effort when they realize they totally messed up on this one. But, in the meantime don't write them off. Go see them on tour because they're great live and keep listening to their previous cds especially City of Evil. You won't be disappointed.

2 out of 5 stars

Huge disappointment October 30, 2007
12 out of 17 found this review helpful

I'll first say that I'm not some crazed A7X fan; I don't have any of their t-shirts, I've never seen them in concert, and I certainly don't have A7X tattooed across my back. But when I first came across their Waking the Fallen album, I felt like I was 15 and listening to Metallica's Master of Puppets for the first time. Avenged Sevenfold had a certain power and aggression that scratched a metal itch and left a grin from ear to ear. I really enjoyed that album and thought City of Evil was a logical step in their music progression. Each and every song was caulked full of talent, power, and aggression that had me coming back for more, I was hooked. After listening to those two albums over the past few years, I was really looking forward to their next release hoping it could top their previous efforts.

My first listen to this album had mixed feelings. Something was missing and it wasn't what I was expecting. Not that a surprise would have been unwelcome but this was disappointing, with some songs plain terrible. The music seems to lack the edge that I came to love about these guys. I don't know if they are trying to reach a broader audience base or if their inspiration was checked at the door during the recording.

The first two songs on this album had my interest and left me with hope. The first song, Critical Acclaim, had a different style that took a few listens before it grew on me. Almost Easy had a pretty cool rhythm to it but still lacked the power that I was hoping. The worst song from the previous efforts top the best of this album. The rest of this release led to nothing but disappointment...and even embarrassment.

Following the first two songs, everything about this album is plain and forgettable...with the exception of the song called A Litle Piece of Heaven. This is by far the WORST song that I have listened to in such a long time, regardless of band and genre. How could they even record this? I can't imagine listening to this in the studio and saying, "yep, that's a keeper!". This sounds like a poorly written song that would be featured in a failing high school musical. There is nothing positive about this song, I can't even commend them on a good effort. I'm in shock that this song is from the same band that wrote so many excellent songs in the past, this is plain terrible. It's such a shame that this the song overshadows anything positive with this album.

In all, I was really hoping for more. A few songs on here would leave me embarrassed if someone caught me listening to them. Those, unfortunately, far outnumber the good songs. I'll look to their previous work to scratch the metal itch; this album missed the metal mark and fell flat on its face.

1 out of 5 stars

Shallow October 31, 2007
12 out of 18 found this review helpful

Oh look, a new Avenged Sevenfold record! "City of Evil" was really disappointing and annoying at times, but it had some of its moments. Let's see if their self-titled album redeems the band to their earlier and fresher days!

No, it does the exact opposite. Avenged Sevenfold have become a POP band. Any trace of their past is erased. Gone. It's a complete 180. They tried experimenting, but only certain bands can experiment and pull it off well. Avenged Sevenfold is not one of those bands. They basically became an over polished pop-rock band that basically don't care about making good music anymore. For shame, but then again, I kind of expected it ever since "City of Evil" came out, and this album makes "City of Evil" look golden.

This is a complete abomination that should never be purchased. Not to mention they did a lazy job on the album cover by inverting the colors on the "Waking The Fallen" cover.

1 out of 5 stars

These types of albums kill careers November 1, 2007
12 out of 16 found this review helpful

I love Avenged just as much as the next person; their previous 2 albums are incredible and will go down as classic masterpieces. The new album however falls short of even holding a candle to anything else they have done. First of all, the opening tune sounds like it has a rip off of an old Megadeth riff and then the vocals are reminiscent of Korn, and the ridiculous rants and raves just aren't convincing and fall short of the vibe they are trying so hard to achieve. Track 4 starts off good but in the end sounds like something that wouldn't have made the cut on city of evil. Track 2 has what sounds like an old Metallica riff. Then there is this nightmare before Christmas sounding song that is a mess. It's almost as if they thought, this sounds too close to Disney, let's throw some cuss words in there to make it more hardcore! And the rest of the lyrics on the disc are atrocious, including those bad vocal effects that someone else said Cher had used. All in All a very forgettable album which has more in common with Emo than it does with metal. When you hear such a great band make such bad slop a few things come to mind such as 1) they are in such a fame and riches induced haze they start over thinking things and experimenting way to much. They desperately needed a real producer on this and might have been able to somewhat salvage what they brought to the table and be pointed in a better direction. 2) They just flat ran out of good ideas and with pressures from the label and everything else, they had to put something out that might be rushed and not really what they were going for. I predict this Album won't even go gold, if it does it will be because people like me buy it the first day based on what they have done previously. I really like the band and hope they do well despite of everything because they seem like great guys and who knows, this might just be a throwaway and they could have a killer comeback in the future but for now they are on a downslide and it's a shame.

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