Avenged Sevenfold’s new self-titled album seems like it would have been a great album. Riding on the coat-tails of the successful release of their album City of Evil and the touring that followed, it just falls short of what the band’s potential was shown to be.
Everything seems much more subdued than it was in their earlier works. Sometimes that works fine. It all depends on how subdued it is and how reliant the artist is on big sounds. Styling is still the same old heavy metal that people got used to.
Lyrically, it is just taking a fall into the generic pool of commercialized sludge that is communally dipped into by most groups in the mainstream facet of the music industry. At least when they have sampled from the commercialized sludge in the past though, it still came out as good.
The vocals really are not what they have been or could have been. Actual singing, as opposed to screaming, is used in some of the tracks. That is not the problem though. It just lacks the heart that the band used to have. If it had the heart that they used to have, and should have, even the hardcore fans of that scream would be happy with the singing. It just seems like they have gotten lazy with success.
Guitars are still pretty hard hitting, but still, they are much more drawn back when their sound relies on big guitars as well as big vocals. They threw out the fact that a lot of their work in the past was almost a continuous shredding solo throughout a song on the lead guitar. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It is just that now, without that, the tunes lack that sound that made them so appealing and lacks the musical substance of their past works.
Drums and bass are the biggest saving grace of this album. The rhythms keep this drawn back, mediocre piece of work worth listening to because they are often the most interesting things in the songs throughout the album.
This might just be the way it sounds in studio. On occasion work on albums come out sounding better live. This might be one of those occasions where all the songs on the Album would be better to hear live.
It was a worthy attempt but was ultimately rushed which made it fail itself. More time should have been taken to make sure that it was better than it actually is. If you are a diehard fan, by all means get the album. If you are not, there is better new music out there. Either that or save your money and just go to their concerts.