AVENGED SEVENFOLD — Nightmare (review)

AVENGED SEVENFOLD — Nightmare album cover Album · 2010 · Heavy Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
The Block
Welcome to the family!

I have never been a huge metalcore fan, but a band with Mike Portnoy drumming is hard to pass up. I had known about Avenged Sevenfold’s newest album for a couple of months before I got around to getting it. I am glad that I did. I never heard The Rev play drums but I can’t imagine him being any better than Mike Portnoy. Another thing that Mike Portnoy brought to the table on this album besides his great drumming was his prog background. One of the songs that greatly benefits from this is the epic “Save Me” which is almost entirely prog metal. Another thing that drew me to this album after I had listened to it a couple of times was that besides metalcore it included other genres that I liked such as heavy metal and prog. Even though the lyrics are well written I still sometimes don’t like the metalcore/ thrash elements to M. Shadows’ singing.

For example, I absolutely love the title track, “Nightmare”, but when the song gets fast all of a sudden the vocals get gritty and are overall not that good. But, other than that the rest of the song is superb. Mike Portnoy’s drumming is great and the guitar work by Synyster Gates and Zacky Vengeance is good. I also like the vocal harmonies that they employ. When M. Shadows actually sings it is great and really smooth instead of jagged and short. The beginning of this song is also very much like a Dream Theater, thanks to Mike Portnoy.

The guitar work on this album is great especially in the fast sections on “Nightmare”. Synyster Gates is really good on guitars on “Save Me” which also has cool vocal harmonies and insane drumming. As I said before, this is definitely the song with the most prog influences on it. M. Shadows voice on this song is perhaps the best on this album.

Another couple of songs in need of reference are “Fiction” and “Welcome to the Family”. “Fiction”, which The Rev supposedly wrote two days before he died, has a great piano opening which carries throughout and s a much slower song than any other on the album. The vocals on it are also very cool. They sound like they are singing in harmony but I can’t tell if they are. “Welcome to the Family” has beautiful guitar work and uses two different vocal styles that really add to its density and overall sound.

My welcome into Avenged Sevenfold is one that I am glad I took the opportunity to look into. Granted, probably the only reason I picked up this album was because of Mike Portnoy, but the reason I stuck with it was not totally because of him but rather because of how good Avenged Sevenfold really is. With this half metalcore half prog album they deserve 4 stars.
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