Avenged Sevenfold (sometimes abbreviated to A7X) is an American heavy metal band from Huntington Beach, California. Formed in 1999, the group consists of lead vocalist M. Shadows, rhythm guitarist and backing vocalist Zacky Vengeance, lead guitarist and backing vocalist Synyster Gates, bass guitarist Johnny Christ, and touring and session drummer Arin Ilejay.
They are known for their diverse rock sound and dramatic imagery in album covers and t-shirts.Avenged Sevenfold emerged with a metalcore sound on their debut Sounding the Seventh Trumpet but their style had evolved by their third album and first major label release, City of Evil into a hard rock/heavy metal sound. The band continued to explore new sounds with their self-titled release and enjoyed continued mainstream success before their drummer, James "The Rev" Sullivan, died in 2009. Despite his death, the band continued on with help of now-former Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy and released and toured in support of their fifth album Nightmare in 2010 which debuted on the top spot of the Billboard 200, their first number one debut.
To date, Avenged Sevenfold has released five studio albums, one live album/compilation/DVD, and eighteen singles and sold more than 8 million albums worldwide
Style and influences
The band has cited bands such as Guns N' Roses, Iron Maiden, Pantera, Bad Religion, Dream Theater, Motorhead, Megadeth, Metallica, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, NOFX, Alice in Chains, Black Flag, Corrosion of Conformity, Suicidal Tendencies, The Misfits, Slayer, The Vandals, Rage Against the Machine, Korn, Deftones and AFI as their artistic influences.
Avenged Sevenfold's material spans multiple genres and has evolved
over the band's entire career. Initially, the band's debut album Sounding the Seventh Trumpet consisted almost entirely of metalcore sound; however, there were several deviations to this genre, most notably in "Streets" which adopts a punk style and "Warmness on the Soul," which is a piano-oriented ballad. On Waking the Fallen,
the band displayed the contemporary metalcore style once more, but
added more clean vocals as well as more mature and intricate musical
elements. In the band's DVD All Excess, producer Andrew Murdock explained this transition: "When I met the band after Sounding the Seventh Trumpet had come out before they had recorded Waking the Fallen,
M. Shadows said to me 'This record is screaming. The record we want to
make is going to be half-screaming half-singing. I don't want to scream
anymore. And the record after that is going to be all singing.'"
On City of Evil, Avenged Sevenfold's third album, the band chose to abandon the metalcore genre, developing a more hard rock
style. Avenged Sevenfold's self-titled album, again, consists of
several deviations to less consistent genres and styles from the album's
main hard rock and heavy metal songs, most notably in "Dear God", which adopts a country style and "A Little Piece of Heaven", which is circled within the influence of Broadway show tunes, using primarily brass instruments and stringed orchestra to take over most of the role of the lead and rhythm guitar. Nightmare contains further deviations, including a piano ballad called "Fiction" and a heavy metal sound related to their metalcore roots on "God Hates Us" and "Not Ready to Die".
The band has changed considerably since their first album, in which
during that time they have been characterized as a heavy band with a screamed and growled vocal style combined with a little bit of clean vocals, chugging guitar riffs and parts similar to breakdowns that one can expect from the metalcore genre.
The band has been criticized in the past for "not being metal enough". Vocalist M. Shadows responded to this with, "we play music for the sake of music, not so that we can be labeled a metal band. That's like telling us we aren't punk enough. Who cares?" Avenged Sevenfold is one of the notable acts for New Wave of American Heavy Metal
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