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