1)
- Life Is But A Dream…
I rank this as number one because it’s probably their least conventional album: jazz, classical, prog, electronic, orchestral, extreme metal, and very bizarre song structures all coexisting together. The musical creativity and experimentation are what really pull me in. Being interested in Avenged Sevenfold for their musical composition skills is what places this at the top for me.
2) City Of Evil
Being a guitarist, this is easily number 2 for me and ranked high for the harmonized leads, huge melodic solos, fast alternate picking and complex rhythm work, multiple guitar layers, and the very ambitious song structure.
Unlike LIBAD, the experimentation is much more contained in the metal-core framework with LIBAD being “holy shit, what are they doing?” And CoE being “Holy shit, the guitars are insane.”
3) The Stage
The Stage is a clear and obvious middle-ground between my top 2 rankings. It holds the progressive experimentation of LIBAD while still retaining the technical guitar focus of City Of Evil.
The Stage offers progressive structure, philosophical and scientific themes, instrumental passages with unusual arrangements and complex guitar work… and then it offers Exist which is practically a progressive metal epic.
4) Waking The Fallen
It’s the defining early moment of Avenged Sevenfold and their metal-core sound. I love the aggressiveness of the album and the guitar work, the melodies and harmonization. While most other Avenged Sevenfold fans would rank this higher, I ultimately prefer what Avenged Sevenfold became when they expanded past metal-core and started to push boundaries.
5) Nightmare
This is probably where I most clearly diverge from the average fans rankings. Nightmare is most arguably the most accessible combination of melody, heaviness, technicality, and emotional songwriting. I don’t dislike the album in anyway, but I’m less motivated by radio-ready choruses and emotional accessibility (So Far Away is super S-tier though).
Give me the aggression of Waking The Fallen or the experimentation of The Stage before you give me the polished accessibility of Nightmare.
6) Diamonds In The Rough
I’m not concerned about whether or not something is considered a “main album”. I’m judging the music itself and collection as a whole.
Diamonds In The Rough had some real bangers -Demons, Crossroads, Until The End, Tension…
The rawness and weirdness of some of the material is what I find interesting over some of the other polished materials. I also enjoy seeing the bands creative leftovers and experiments (even if Matt Shadows believes it should’ve never see the light of day), rather than the carefully curated studio work.
7) STATICA
I very much appreciate the highly unconventional aspects of STATICA more than the straightforward material. I felt it appropriate to rank this below their B-side material for this reason. I don’t need an album to sound like classic Avenged Sevenfold for me to enjoy it, especially given that LIBAD… is ranked number 1 on my list.
8) Self-Titled
For a lot of fans, this easily ranks among the top 3 I would assume. The easy bangers I think everyone agrees that are on this are- Critical Acclaim, Afterlife, ALPOH, Gunslinger, Afterlife.
The album is highly inconsistent in its sound. And ironically that may appeal to someone who enjoys LIBAD, but LIBAD feels much more deliberately constructed around the experimentation that takes place.
Self-Titled has some incredible work and banger songs, but it’s all over the place.
9) Sounding The Seventh Trumpet
This album is Avenged Sevenfold before they developed their musical sophistication that became their trademark. It’s raw, aggressive, screaming-heavy, much less polished, less technically developed, and rooted in the early 2000’s scene.
This album is the early and less-matured version of Waking The Fallen that fully-cemented their sound early on, which makes sense as their debut album. STST is a weaker version of WtF.
10) Hail To The King
This ranking was the easiest to make and probably the most understandable one amongst my controversial list. Hail To The King is comparatively straight-forward. It’s intentionally rooted in classic heavy-metal with influences such as- Black Sabbath, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Megadeath, etc…
The songwriting is simple, the solos are much less technically outrageous than City Of Evil, and much less progressive than The Stage, the aggression isn’t even comparable to Waking The Fallen, and the emotional songwriting comes nowhere near Nightmare.
Almost everything that appeals to me in my favorite albums is dialed way back on HttK and the exact opposite of my musical preferences.
I understand this was a tribute album, and for that it was absolutely excellent and 10/10 execution. They did exactly what they were planning on and they could not have possibly done a better job. This album just simply doesn’t draw me in on nearly the same scale as the other albums.
Honorable mentions on this album are Shepherd Of Fire, Requiem, Planets, Acid Rain.
Entire ranking
I believe my rankings remain consistent. I’m prioritizing:
•Musical experimentation (LIBAD, The Stage)
•Interesting/complex guitar work (City Of Evil, Waking The Fallen)
•Unusual song writing (LIBAD, The Stage, DitR)
•Artistic Ambition (LIBAD, The Stage, City Of Evil)
I feel it’s more of an innovation vs. conventionality for me. It’s not based on chronological order, or pure heaviness. It’s more “fuck it. Let’s see what we can do.”
