With talent of biblical proportions, Avenged Sevenfold is showing metalcore fans everywhere that the one thing they believe in is making thought-provoking music that stands the test of time. The group, named after the Biblical story of God’s wrath upon Cain for killing his brother Abel, was formed in the summer of 1999 while its members were still in high school in Huntington Beach, California. Members of the band to this date include
M. Shadows (vocals), Zacky Vengeance (guitar), Synyster Gates (guitar), the
Reverend (drums), and Johnny Christ (bass). The band ma
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de its official debut in July 2001, releasing Sounding the Seventh Trumpet on the Good Life label, before moving to the Hopeless roster for 2003's Waking the Fallen. Warner
Bros took interest in the band's aggressive sound and issued their breakthrough release, City of Evil, in June 2005. The album reached number 30 on Billboard's Top 200, propelled in part by the Top Ten success of the single "Bat Country”, a song written for Hunter S. Thompson about the band’s own adventures in Vegas. The accompanying music video was heavily aired on MTV and Fuse, where live appearances also aided Avenged's growing popularity. The band ultimately won the Best New Artist Award (though they were hardly newcomers) at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards.
Though demand for their music increased, Avenged Sevenfold canceled their tour dates for fall 2006 and headed to Houston,
Texas where they got to work on their fourth studio album. Boasting a grittier sound than previous releases, the self-titled/self-produced disc appeared in October 2007, debuting at number four on the Billboard Top 200 and spawning such hit singles as “
Afterlife” and “Dear God.” Although the names of the band members and their tunes have a decidedly religious bent, that is not what “Avenged Sevenfold” is all about according to frontman Shadows: “That's one thing about this band that I love is that we never really shove any kind of, like, political or religious beliefs on people, “ he has said in an interview. “The music's there to entertain and be thought-provoking on both sides.” Their music certainly has done all of that.
