City of Evil is the third studio album and first major label release by American metal band Avenged Sevenfold. The album was released on June 7, 2005 under the Warner Bros. Records label. Produced by Scott Gilman, City of Evil contains a more hard rock sound than Avenged Sevenfold's previous two albums, which had been classified into the metalcore genre. The album is also notable for the absence of screaming vocals. M. Shadows worked with vocal coach Ron Anderson, whose clients have included Axl Rose and Chris Cornell, for months before the album's release to achieve a sound that had "grit while still having the tone".
The album contains some of Avenged Sevenfold's most popular and famous songs, including "Bat Country", "Beast and the Harlot", "Burn it Down", and "Seize the Day". All four of these songs were released as singles between June 2005 and July 2006. City of Evil was very successful after its release, debuting at #30 on the Billboard Top 200 chart. The album was certified as a platinum record by the Recording Industry Association of America in August 2009, and has gone onto sell over 1,500,000 copies in the United States, and 2,500,000 total worldwide. As of 2010, it remains the best-selling out of Avenged Sevenfold's discography. It is also their longest studio album tracking at over seventy-two minutes.
Three of the songs off of the album, "Bat Country", "Beast and the Harlot" and "Seize the Day", were also released as music videos. Directors for these videos included Marc Klasfeld, Tony Petrossian, and Wayne Isham, respectively. The Rev performs vocals on the tracks Bat Country, Strength Of The World, and, M.I.A.
In 2006, the album was placed number 63 on Guitar World magazine's list of the 100 greatest guitar albums of all time.
History
Previously, Avenged Sevenfold had written and released two albums, Sounding the Seventh Trumpet in 2001 and Waking the Fallen in 2003, under the Hopeless Records label. Although neither album was a smash hit, the latter has been certified gold by the RIAA. Waking the Fallen attracted several major record labels to the band, and eventually they signed with Warner Bros. Records after consideration of several others.
Musical changes
When they began to write the album, Avenged Sevenfold turned to their influences for a change in style. Realizing that none of their favorite bands was as heavy or extreme as them, they decided to change from metalcore to a more classic hard rock/heavy metal sound with few metalcore influences. "When we started working on this record, we said, 'You know what? None of our favorite bands are super extreme, they just write really good melodic songs that are still heavy," said singer M. Shadows in an interview.M. Shadows' vocal changes
Shadows turned to Ron Anderson, a vocal coach that had previously worked with Axl Rose of Guns N' Roses and Chris Cornell of Soundgarden. Shadows was specifically looking to add a more gritty, raspy tone to his voice and worked with Anderson for several months on this before City of Evil was recorded."Ron taught me how to have that grit to my voice while still having the tone. He brought all of that to the table and he brought that technique to my voice. I’ve worked with him for about a year and a half now, but I worked with him for nine months before the record," said Shadows, "I told him that I want my voice to sound different from everybody else, but I wanted those characteristics in my voice...It was one of those things that we just wanted to go all the way with it."Reception
The album debuted at #30 on the Billboard Top 200 selling over 30,000 copies.Rolling Stone praised the guitar work, giving the album three out of a possible five stars.Johnny Loftus of Allmusic rated the album three-and-a-half stars out of five and commented "...Avenged Sevenfold gets all the pieces right, and sound like they're having more fun here than in the scattershot approach of the first couple records".British magazine Metal Hammer gave the album an eight out of ten rating with Katie Parsons concluding "They have done it their way, they're having fun and (in light of all the whinging emo kids whimpering out there) who the hell can blame them?". In addition, "Bat Country" was one of the breakout singles of 2005, reaching #2 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock Charts, #6 on Billboard's Modern Rock Charts, and #1 on MTV's Total Request Live.The album was ranked #63 on Guitar World's "100 Greatest Guitar Albums of All-Time". Additionally, the band won Best New Artist at the MTV Video Music Awards, beating out Rihanna, Panic at the Disco, James Blunt, Angels & Airwaves and Chris Brown
Track listing
All songs written and composed by Avenged Sevenfold.
| City of Evil | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Title | Length | |||||||
| 1. | "Beast and the Harlot" | 5:41 | |||||||
| 2. | "Burn It Down" | 4:58 | |||||||
| 3. | "Blinded in Chains" | 6:35 | |||||||
| 4. | "Bat Country" | 5:13 | |||||||
| 5. | "Trashed and Scattered" | 5:55 | |||||||
| 6. | "Seize the Day" | 5:32 | |||||||
| 7. | "Sidewinder" | 7:01 | |||||||
| 8. | "The Wicked End" | 7:10 | |||||||
| 9. | "Strength of the World" | 9:14 | |||||||
| 10. | "Betrayed" | 6:47 | |||||||
| 11. | "M.I.A." | 8:46 | |||||||
Videography
City of Evil features most of the songs that Avenged Sevenfold has made videos for. On May 4, 2005, they released a promotional video for "Burn It Down", which was done in the same way as "Unholy Confessions" on Waking the Fallen (live video with dubbed music). On July 28, 2005, their first professional video for a song on the album, "Bat Country", was released. It was directed by Marc Klasfeld. On February 6, 2006, "Beast and the Harlot" was released. This was a few weeks after it had been leaked on YouTube. It was directed by Tony Petrossian. Most recently, on June 30, 2006, the video for "Seize the Day" was released on Avenged Sevenfold's MySpace. The video was directed by Wayne Isham.
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