(Warner Bros.)

- advertisement -

Mascara? Check.
Black T-Shirts? Check.
Spooky Cover Art? Check.
Tour with “cool” band like Mushroomhead? Check.
Inclusion on numerous video game soundtracks? Check.

I should hate Avenged Sevenfold. After all, they look sort of like AFI, and the mainstream press has been all over this band like a blister on the vagina of a two-dollar whore. These days, it seems that whenever Rolling Stone, Blender and Spin -- or any other magazine that actually deems Radiohead a substantive musical force -- condescends to cover metal these days, it’s usually to either heap praise on The Darkness or give props to Avenged Sevenfold for incorporating guitar solos into their songs as if that alone is enough to successfully meet all criteria required to be considered an authentic metal musician. Hell, most of the mainstream rags actually consider St. Anger to be a “return to the classic brutal, Metallica sound.” That being the case, it was still sort of interesting to hear of a band traveling around on the Warped Tour armed only with a box of black eye makeup and a repertoire of tunes typically logging in at six minutes or more in length.