Album Rating: 4.0

Yeah I just really respect the eclecticism and some songs on here are just huge. I'm also a HTTK sympathizer though so I get it lol

Album Rating: 2.5

Coming Home and Heretic pop the fuck off, I love the acoustic version of the title track as well. And yes Shepherd of Fire is tight

ive got no nostalgia for this nor do i have any baggage of having this band around in my youth at all, only discovered their music for me with their latest album and genuingely found their approach to songwriting refreshing, especially for such a mainstream band i expect to be boiler plate

Album Rating: 2.5

Where does this stack up compared to their larger body of work in your opinion?

i dont really have a comprehensive image of their discography (yet) but right now its my second fav

Album Rating: 2.5

That is pretty interesting. Did you start from the beginning?

yeah wasnt a big fan of their first two albums

Album Rating: 2.5

Bummer. Waking the Fallen is by far my favorite

Album Rating: 2.5

Not a metalcore boy eh



Tbh the “good” things about this album are 10x amplified with Life is But a Dream… like i touched on it last page but bluntly, it really just feels like that record is everything this record wants to be. To me they actually went the extra mile and had the maturity / experience to actually pull it off.



To me this record just feels like a massive step down from CoE. The songwriting is far less adventurous, and tbh it’s probably the most basic they’ve ever sounded aside from HttK, but again I at least feel like that record knows what it is and does what it sets out to do. This record feels aimless and like you gave a bunch of 25 year olds way too much money to engage in all of their worst ideas.



I dunno. I’d never trash somebody for liking it, other than the seemingly endless amount of fans that somehow love this but hate LIBAD… like hey guys, this is literally the beta test for that record.

Album Rating: 2.5

"especially for such a mainstream band i expect to be boiler plate"



That's always been the unfortunate thing about Avenged tbh. They were often lumped in with the boiler plate metal bands like Disturbed (or the boiler plate metalcore bands like Atreyu), despite offering something much more eclectic and interesting, even in their early career. But I guess people were desperate to lump every band into some sort of scene, no matter how little they fit lol



Kinda reminds me of Suicide Silence. The Cleansing is an absolutely brutal, visceral experience with some of the heaviest riffs in deathcore to this day... but because of Mitch's swoopy haircut, we're gonna put 'em in the Hot Topic pile instead

Album Rating: 3.0

True that. But I guess there's an advantage in that some less obvious sounds found their way into the ears of a fairly large group of fans of only tangentially related music.

Album Rating: 2.5

Unfortunately, at least some of it is self inflicted… they tour with some really trash bands man. Tbh I’m sure they’ve even toured with Disturbed at some point, but like, I’ll even go with their “classic” records, just listen to The Sickness and City of Evil back to back and sincerely try to tell me these two things are the same.



But they’ve toured with that douchebag Ronnie Radke, Breaking Benjamin, Atreyu, Volbeat… and that’s just the last few tours off the dome. Shit, they’re about to tour with fucking Good Charlotte.



My very first concert they had Deftones and Ghost opening… obv that can’t happen now but man why can’t they tour with more bands like that?

Local gym played Almost Easy today, not gonna lie, it went hard af. Been ages since I heard that song

Album Rating: 4.0

Personal growth for me was realizing this is top tier

Album Rating: 2.5

I think I’ve long accepted that I’ll never like half of these songs. Other half range from good to peak (Afterlife obv)

Album Rating: 2.0

Afterlife is their best song, but 85% of this album sucks sadly.

Album Rating: 2.5

This sounded badass when I was teen, now this sounds freaking asinine. Band went tone deaf and plasticy production doesn't help at all. Especially the singing is so off. Couple of pretty good songs thou. And little lost heaven is never not funny to me. It's like a mentally stunted metalheads idea of bohemian rhapsody. Damn I thought it was high art lmao. I challenge you to watch the music video.

Album Rating: 2.5

Cosmic tho >>>>>>



I would def say Afterlife is top 5-10

Album Rating: 2.5

Almost Easy is still damn good too, I only wish the piano was higher in the mix, such a weird decision to have it so buried. Brompton Cocktail is pretty fire too imo

Album Rating: 3.5

Brompton Cocktail [2]



This and Afterlife are probably the only two songs from this album that I can still really get behind as a....xxYO...but I can still dig like 60% of this album for the nostalgia factor