So yeah.. their new (4th) CD hits the streets today. I've had it for a couple weeks now and have listened through it quite a few times. Let me preface this by saying, if you don't like them, I don't care. I do. I don't care if you think they're emo, or nu-metal, or whatever. I don't label bands. I listen to the music (because image is worthless to me) and judge a band solely on the merits of the music.

OK.. now that I have that out of the way. I really like this CD. To me it shows great versatility, and in some ways a bit of a sense of humor on their part.

Songs like Critical Acclaim, Almost Easy, and Scream are very similar to things you've heard from them already as are several of the other tracks. Straight ahead heavy stuff, with quite capable musicality shown from both guitarists (I despise their stupid names BTW). Interestingly, the drummer lends his voice to these tracks quite a bit (and quite well I might add).

A couple tracks go back to their roots being fast paced not-quite-thrashing songs, except now their singer is singing instead of the cookiemonster-esque screaming from their 1st and 2nd CD's. This one took awhile, but it growing on me.

Where things really take a strange turn (good or bad is up to you.. I happen to like it), is with songs like A Little Piece of Heaven, and the HEAVILY country/ballad inspired Dear God. The former being quite theatrical in nature taking on something reminiscent of a HEAVY Queen with some Rocky Horror Picture Show thrown into the mix. This song is really all over the place musically, yet somehow it works. I found myself laughing at the thought of what the 'standard' Avenged Sevenfold fan is going to think when they hear this song. I suspect it'll range from confusion to outright anger.

Then comes Dear God, with pedal steel guitar, banjo, and other generally country sounding elements. I really like it when bands throw you a curveball against their 'standard' style and show versatility like this. The song also happens to be pretty good too, which doesn't hurt.

Overall this is a solid disc, and one that'll do well for them I think. Like them or not, you can't dispute their musical ability, and I hope they keep up with the diversity of musical style in the future. It would have been VERY easy to just remake City of Evil and call it a day, and I'm very happy to see they didn't take the easy way out.</div> <div> __________________
Elidroth Renato
Game Designer
Everquest
Sony Online Entertainment, LLC

"But there's no sense crying
over every mistake.
You just keep on trying
Til you run out of cake."

Weiterlesen...