Imagine the awful musical child of Limp Bizkit and Nickelback, mix in a few overbearing guitar solos, six-minute-long snoozers and ironic Christian lyrics and lace in the occasional F-bomb, and you’ve got Avenged Sevenfold’s self-titled album.
The band pretty much has a monopoly on the mainstream Christian-metal genre, scoring radio-hits with songs such as “Bat Country” and “Beast and the Harlot” (a “face melter” on Guitar Hero II), but the band strays away from its metal roots a bit on Avenged Sevenfold, and even throws in a few surprises on the album.
Simply put, these songs don’t work. On the laughable “Critical Acclaim,” the album’s opener and first single, lead singer M. Shadows channels his inner Fred Durst, half-rapping, half-screaming about “high society … blaming their own nation for who wins elections” over blaring guitars.
His complaints of hypocrisy seem somewhat ironic, however, as the band’s gothic style and cock-rock sound contrasts greatly with their sometimes-Christian lyrics. The album’s closer, “Dear God,” is a treacherous six-and-a-half-minute country-love ballad. M. Shadows demonstrates his softer side, singing, “Dear God, the only thing I ask of you is/ To hold her when I’m not around.” But M. Shadows has neither the lyrical wit nor the expressive voice to sing such a sentimental song, and it definitely falls flat.
About the only thing Avenged Sevenfold has going for it is its instrumentation, especially on the haunting, orchestral “A Little Piece of Heaven.” But M. Shadows somewhat ruins the song, singing “must have stabbed her fifty f—–g times” and “ripped her heart out right before her eyes.” Classy.
Similarly, “Unbound (The Wild Ride) features some pretty fancy piano work, even if it does try to win some goth points by having a creepy kid sing the outro. The song – as well as “Little Piece of Heaven,” and others – would sound better as an instrumental track, especially because the guitar work by Synyster Gates and Zacky Vengeance is notable. It’s just not enough to save the album from M. Shadows’ disappointing touch.
The band doesn’t completely lose sight of its roots, however, and is at its (admittedly still mediocre) best when it sticks to its hard-rock style. “Lost,” one of the better songs on the album, features a high-energy intro before losing steam as it hits the five-minute mark.
Nothing on the album is as catchy as “Beast and the Harlot,” and Avenged Sevenfold never knows when to end a song, always droning on for far too long. The album’s 10 songs clock in at just over 53 minutes, and so many miss the mark that it’s hard to enjoy anything the band does right.
aggro@umd.edu
Rating: 1.5 stars out of 5
