AVENGED SEVENFOLD — Nightmare (review)

AVENGED SEVENFOLD — Nightmare album cover

Album · 2010 · Heavy Metal

2.5/5 · 2010-10-05
Time Signature

Censorship nightmare...

Genre: metalcore

Avenged Sevenfold, or AX7, received a lot of flak on the basis of this album, which features Mike Portney, from people who blame AX7 for Portnoy's departure from Dream Theater. This criticism is stupid and unfair! That being said, they will receive flak in this review, but for reasons that are completely different (but maybe just as unfair).

Firstly, I've experienced AX7 live once, back when The Rev was still alive, and I thought they were a quite good band. I didn't care much for their American stylized metalcore/popstar image, but I really liked a lot of their music. Anyway, the music on this album is not bad at all. Apart from some more poppy moments and some ballads that are too ordinary for my taste, this album contains a lot of metal elements that I appreciate: such as guitar harmonies, thrash metal riffing, polka-thrash drumming and good musicianship (especially the guitar work and the drumming is very impressive).

But there was one thing that ruined the whole listening experience for me. The chorus of the opening track was censored. They blanked out "fucking" in the line "It's your fucking nightmare". That offended me and pissed me off. I don't need any authority from another country other than that in which I live (probably the United States in this case) to decide for me which words I can or cannot hear. Aged 33, I am an adult; it's my decision to make! Seriously, this really pissed me off, and totally ruined my impression of the album; now, it's not that I get a kick out of someone singing "fuck" (I tend to find it silly), but censorship of this type really, really, really offends me. It lowers the value of the product I've bought; and it kind of constitutes fraud or theft, because buyers have paid for a product with certain parts missing (it's like buying a car with no brakes, or a computer with keys missing from the keyboard). The worst part to this story is that nowhere on the cover does it say "this is a censored version" - this is covert censorship, it's fraud and it's fucking disgusting!

The music's okay. The censorship isn't. If there's an uncensored version out there, buy that one. Stay away from the censored one. If it is a general thing that the censored versions are not announced as censored, don't buy this album at all. The music is worth 3,5 stars in my book, but because of the censorship on the copy I have, I am going to subtract one star.

more than 2 years ago
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Pekka wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Sounds like you should get your copy changed if you took it back to the store.

Time Signature wrote:

more than 2 years ago

It's not metal at all. But I don't know if Ax7 or the label are to blame. I assume that the band didn't purposely write "your fucking nightmare" in order for it to be censored out. I mean, they must feel stepped on, too. If not, then they've got no artistic integrity.

UMUR wrote:

more than 2 years ago

It´s not exactly the same but there are also two different versions of Wolverine Blues by Entombed. one with movie samples and one where some of the samples have been removed ( probably because of copyright issues or something like that). After having gotten used to the version with the samples it´s almost impossible to listen the version without the samples. ( there´s one from Flatliners there). This is much worse though. Censoring your music so you can reach a bigger audience ( because that´s the essence here) is not very "metal" now is it?

Time Signature wrote:

more than 2 years ago

What really annoys me is that I was never informed that it was a censored version. There should be a sticker on it saying, "Censored version", and then it should be cheaper than the uncensored one.

UMUR wrote:

more than 2 years ago

That´s actually pretty odd :-(

Time Signature wrote:

more than 2 years ago

I purchased it in Denmark... which is why it makes no sense at all.

UMUR wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Hmm...sorry to hear you purchased a censored version. I would probably be pissed too. The version I have isn´t censored ( yeah I´m rubbing salt into the wound :-) ). Did you purchase your copy in Denmark?