Avenged Sevenfold Flac

Coming off a Best New Artist Award at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards, the members of Avenged Sevenfold returned to the studio, ambitious to create an exciting follow-up to City of Evil - perhaps overly so, as their self-titled release focuses entirely too hard on pushing the songs into non-metal territory. Their signature, blistering Yngwie Malmsteen guitar arpeggios and lightning fast double-kick drums are still evident, but the overall heavy metal thunder is diluted by their everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach. Left alone in the studio to record the album on their own, AS show their unbridled enthusiasm to be as inventive as possible as they run through a staggering amount of production enhancements: four songs have string arrangements; violinists, pianists, and vocalists make guest appearances here and there…

Following the death of Avenged Sevenfold drummer James “The Reverend” Sullivan in 2009, the band marched on, enlisting the help of Sullivan’s drumming hero, Dream Theater’s Mike Portnoy, for their fifth studio album Nightmare. Luckily, the sound of the band remains unchanged, and as one of the best drummers in the business, Portnoy picks up the reigns and rides the Deathbat's double kick in complete synchronicity with Gates, Christ, and Vengeance. Like their previous outings, the group incorporates a New Wave of British Heavy Metal influence throughout Nightmare while paying tribute to ‘80s hair metal with guitar god appeal; but playing retroactive music doesn’t seem to concern them, as long as they play it more skillfully than their forefathers…

The long-gestating follow-up to 2016's ambitious concept album Stage, Life Is But a Dream… sees Avenged Sevenfold go further down the rabbit hole with an innovative set of progressive metal epics rooted in existential crisis. Inspired by the band's dalliances with hallucinogens and the writings of French philosopher Albert Camus, the LP covers a wide swath of sonic terra firma, from punishing thrash and hardcore to operatic, Pink Floyd-esque space rock peppered with Daft Punk-inspired vocoders and lush orchestral flourishes.

Mudrock's dry production focuses almost all of Waking the Fallen on Avenged Sevenfold's greatest strength. That, of course, would be performance, and the band delivers with unflagging aggression and precision. Never mind the lyrical ennui or throat-scrape yowling; there's more to this music than generic cliché. When he wants to, M. Shadows can passionately project in a way that turns even the grim "Desecrate Through Reverance" into an almost bouncy little melody. (Incidentally, Reverance? Remenissions? Reverand? Maybe doomsday is around the corner, but isn't there still time to run song titles and soubriquets through a spell check?) And whether attacking a riff in unison or in harmonized parts, the double-threat guitars of Synyster Gates and Zacky Vengeance do their duty like search-and-destroy commandos - in and out fast, leaving devastation in their wake…

The seventh studio long-player from the veteran California-based metal ensemble, and their first new collection of music to feature ex-Bad Religion drummer Brooks Wackerman behind the kit, The Stage sees Avenged Sevenfold rolling up their sleeves and delivering an ambitious concept LP. Dropped with little to no promotion - WWE superstar and Fozzy frontman Chris Jericho leaked the album's original title, Voltaic Oceans, via his Instagram account a month prior to the release - the narrative concerns itself with the Orwellian consequences of a world struggling to adapt to the myriad complexities of artificial intelligence - there's even a spoken word appearance by celebrity astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. Despite some forays into Floyd-ian space rock - the soloing in the orchestra-driven "Roman Sky" is positively Gilmour-esque - the 11-track set mostly sticks to the kind of propulsive, melodic carnage…

Avenged Sevenfold has crafted a tremendous variation of metalcore, inflecting the traditional metal sound with outrageous bursts of hardcore fury and mesmerizing wails more likely found in the European vein of death metal. These elements together create an amazing but lethal crush on the listener, leaving one breathless after such feats. Sounding the Seventh Trumpet is an exceptional album that finds the group perfecting its own distinct style, and although the bandmembers remain fairly unknown on the metal scene, one could only imagine that this will change rather quickly. Frontman M. Shadows is a force to be reckoned with, as his screams are capable of making blood flow from one's ears, while his singing voice has the ability to feel those vicious wounds…

Following the release of "Carry On" for the Call of Duty Arms: Black Ops II video game, Avenged Sevenfold returned to the studio with new drummer, Arin Ilejay of Confide, to record 2013's Hail to the King. In a press announcement, vocalist M. Shadows announced they would be attempting to go back to their Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin roots, and at the surface, the idea of dumbing down their music to sturdy classic rock grooves made a lot of sense, since many of the compositions on their last two albums had become overwrought with studio overdubbing. Unfortunately, once they tried to take inspiration from other bands, they mimicked them so well that they lost their sense of identity in the process…