Avenged Sevenfold - Nightmare

Today The World Tour moves on from New York to California, where we'll be looking at the new Avenged Sevenfold album 'Nightmare'.

Let me straighten up a few things first - Avenged Sevenfold are my four (previously five) worst people on Earth. I hate their gimmicky names and their gimmicky existence and I hated their music.

However, with new album 'Nightmare' something has changed. With the sudden death of drummer 'The Rev', Avenged Sevenfold seem to have found a way of making captivating music.

'Nightmare' has significantly less Biblically themed lyrics, and songs seem a lot more real and relatable than previous efforts. Song structure is good here too; agressive verses and bridges that lead into soaring melodic choruses works really well, even if it can begin to feel a bit formulaic.

Some of the guitar solos are really impressive on 'Nightmare', particularly the one on 'God Hates Us' - that is definitely the scariest thing I've heard in music all year.

The song 'Fiction' is an interesting song - a vocal duet between M.Shadows and The Rev, which would have been the last thing he recorded before his death. Now, if Rev hadn't died I have no doubt that this would not have made the album as his vocal preformance here is the absolute worst thing ever. Also, I'm convinced there must be some sort of conspiracy going on here as one of the Rev's lines are:

"So tell everybody, the one's who walk beside me
I hope you find your own way when I'm not with you"

and then he died. Maybe his death was suicide, or maybe he just writes songs pretending to be dead. In any case, the inclusion of 'Fiction' on the album is nice in order to honor The Rev, but it's a poor song that lets the album down.

All in all, 'Nightmare' is a strong album, it's really emotional and it's really dark but it showcases some great talent that I don't like to admit these people have. This could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship between us, but who knows?
When Mike Portnoy (stand in drummer for Rev, originally of Dream Theatre) changes his name to The Priest then I'll take back all the nice things I said and the band go fuck themselves. Until then though, congrats on a good album, and I might even go and see them this November if it means I can see songs like 'Danger Line' and 'Buried Alive'.
4/5

Coheed and Cambria - Live at the HMV Forum, London

This is really late, but it's not something I'm going to be forgetting any time soon.

On June 24th The World Tour hit the road once more with both Matt and myself. Staying in New York from the We Are Scientists special, this time we caught Coheed and Cambria.

I'd been looking forward to this for an absolute eternity, it was the first time I'd get to see Coheed at their own show - my previous experience only being Sonisphere last summer.
This was also exciting because the HMV Forum is a venue that I'd never been to before, and had been wanting to go there for some time. When I found out it was in Camden I was pretty horrified.

The venue was actually really nice though, which was great. After having a few pints at The World's End we headed over to the Forum with my Black Card and got in the queue. I'm gonna go ahead and say it now that I really dislike Coheed and Cambria fans. When this blog takes off and goes mainstream I may need to apologize for this, but for the time being let it be known that I dislike fans of Coheed and Cambria.
Anywho, thanks to my Black Card we got into the venue 15 minutes early and had a little look at the merch table where Matt bought a t-shirt. Then the band came onto the stage, and Claudio gave us a solo acoustic performance of 'Here We Are, Juggernaut' which was amazing.
Matt and I decided to go on a hunt for a cash machine, and the one in the venue was broken so we had to leave and once more brave the streets of Camden. This was brilliant, however, as we bumped into Chris Pennie and Travis Stever. I got my Year of the Black Rainbow...thing...signed and then we were on our way.
When we returned to the venue there was a short wait and then we were greeted by 'These Monsters' - the only support act of the night. They asked if we were fans of heavy metal, then began their set.
I actually really enjoyed them, there were hardly any vocals but the music was really good. From what I have read since and could tell at the time, though, I was the only person who liked them.
We then waited for what seemed like forever before the lights finally dimmed and the music for 'One' began playing.
Coheed and Cambria came on stage, opening with The Broken, followed straight by Here We Are Juggernaut. The next song 'No World For Tomorrow' was probably one of my highlights of the night and was strangely the only song they played from their last album.
Then they played two songs from their first album - 'Time Consumer' and 'Everything Evil' which got massive reactions from the crowd.
I've always got something to say about the crowd, and I was really mixed on this one. That's probably because the crowd seemed so mixed - there was a bit of every type of crowd member there:
There were a couple of the big shirtless men, causing trouble.
Angry people who only wanted to hurt other people
hxc kids
People who moan when they get touched by someone
Awesome people (only one)(me)
girls who hold hands and spin around in circles
backpack loser who runs into the middle and does that stupid windmill thing with his arms
a few familiar faces too - i always wonder if they recognise me
circle pit losers
Don't think I saw a Machine Fucking Head though, which is always good.

Anyway, Coheed played a near-perfect setlist, with a brilliant amount of songs from In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth:3 which is always good.

I had an incredibly good time, and even broke my personal sweat record. My favourite songs of the night were not the ones I was expecting at all - No World For Tomorrow, Made Out of Nothing and Welcome Home.

After it was over we went round the back and hung outside for a while, and Mic came out and I got my YOTBR thing signed again. We waited about an hour for Claudio but to my despair we had to leave for the train.
All in all though, I was expecting the best night ever, and it pretty much was.

Obviously ★★★★★