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Avenged Sevenfold: City Of Evil Hard Rock, Heavy Metal Warner Bros. Records June 7th, 2005
- Requested Review Ryan Wahl - | ||
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Review
What once was a rather decent Metalcore act, Avenged Sevenfold have become some sort of offspring of both Hard Rock acts, as well as classic Heavy Metal bands. Being unable to call it quits due to financial issues involving their label, the group has changed their sound, which is a good thing as the band's vocalist apparently had blown his voice out, which was bound to happen from the painful performances he would lay down on the previous recordings. However, here we have an album with a good amount of promise musically, but again, is held back by that very same vocalist, as well as the often absurd track lengths. City Of Evil has come under fire by many people from their older fan base, as well as strangers to the band and newly recruited fans. The truth about this release is that it really is not that bad an album. There are plenty of tracks on here that show a lot of promise and are very entertaining to listen to, such as the singles "Beat and the Harlot" and "Bat Country", even though the latter has a really lame spoken word introduction that turns into gibberish before the song actually kicks in. "The Wicked End" is a rather decent slower paced track that works well with the vocal style presented on this album, and yet you also have "Seize the Day" which is a decent ballad track that is actually really entertaining musically, but vocally can start to get a little irritating. Of course, this city if plagued with plenty of issues to counter the entertaining music and often very impressive guitar solos. First of all, many of the songs on here are just ungodly long and really have no need to be. Not a single song is under five minutes in length aside "Burn It Down" which is one second shorter if you want to be technical, as well as feels like an eternity before it ever ends, with only four tracks being under six minutes. Now, this isn't to say that an album full of short songs would work better, however given how whiny some of the tracks get it would definitely be a plus, this just causes some of the songs, such as "Blinded in Chains" and "Sidewinder" to name a few, to be drawn out for insane amounts of time and, in the end, become very boring and repetative, not to mention that, on top of some of these drawn out issues, you have a really grating vocal performance of absolute Guns 'N Roses worship that often borders the line between Hard Rock and Emo. The perfect example would be the track "Burn It Down" which has one of the most nasally and whiny performances on this release, and is enough to make you hit skip after the two minute mark if you even make it that far. City Of Evil is not a bad album, but due to prolonging the end of the song, and the often whiny Axl Rose immitation can really drag the album down. This sudden and often dramatic change, such as the track "The Wicked End" with it's operatic female vocals and music mid-song, is going to upset the fans of the Metalcore version of Avenged Sevenfold, there's no doubt about that. But, until they find a better vocalist that fits the music without sounding like something that contradicts the entire feel of the song, this new style will just be overhyped and extremely overrated.
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