Music Banter - Nightmare, Avenged Sevenfold

Well, I know this is late but im doing a review on this album, just joined the forum.

Musical Style: Avenged Sevenfold's "Nightmare" was very interesting in the musical style of it. It had many different types of songs ranging from heavy metal like songs to lite acoustic themed songs. I was a little skeptical about how the drumming would sound with the addition of Mike Portnoy. I was concerned for what he would write for the song's due to the fact that the music "Dream Theater" produces is far from Avenged Sevenfold. I was pleased however to find out most of the drum parts were already written and demoed before Jimmy's tragic death. And because of that most of the drumming was A7X style. And Portnoy certainly delivered with excellent drum technique and talent. As for the guitar they took a step towards a more acoustic style in song's such as "So Far Away" and "Tonight The World Dies". However you can hear the classic dueling hard guitars in songs such as "Welcome To The Family" and "Danger Line". As for Synyster, I didn't really here many solo's that stood out to me like some of the ones in the previous album, although he did deliver well in "Nightmare". Also, although lacking the usual technical difficulty we see from Syn the "So Far Away" solos had a unmatched feel and emotion in them. As for the bass there is much to say. Johnny delivered well with his usual moderate bass lines and was able to bring the perfect amount of groove into the tracks. Now for vocals, once again M.Shadows was able to preform his husky like melodies which can be both ruff and emotional. Matt's wide array of options be has with his voice made the musical variations a breeze to preform. Yet, in the piece "God Hates Us", the vocals ventured back to a more "Waking The Fallen" type vibe.

Technicality: As usual Avenged displayed superb musicianship in "Nightmare". The duel guitars were just as spectacular as ever. The writing process again, must have been of extreme intellectual musicianship, the working both of Brian and Jimmy. Once again the guitars required moderate to high skill to master by the standard guitarist. For the drums Mike Portnoy did an excellent job of preforming many difficult drum techniques. Once again from the musically inclined mind of James Owen Sullivan the drum were superb. As for the bass it was of easy to moderate bass tracks consisting of your average rock/metal vibe. The vocals are generally difficult to preform in perfect melody and in sync notes as of M.Shadows but was certainly not the hardest vocals tracks I've seen.

Popularity: Nightmare could easily be considered Avenged Sevenfold's most popular album but could be compared with their breakout album "City Of Evil". Personally, I believe that the reason for the album's popularity was the wide range of tracks that had completely different styles. There was a song on there for every rock fan with I believe contributed the most to it's overall popularity. I believe this album has opened the gate for any future Avenged Sevenfold albums to top charts.

Ratings:

Guitar: 7/10
Drums: 9/10
Bass: 5/10
Vocals: 7/10
Other Instrumentals: 6/10

Writing Difficulty: 9/10
Technique: 8/10
Popularity: 7/10

Overall: 8/10