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| Blogcritics |
 Man, where to begin. To say I was looking forward to this would be something of an understatement. I was anxiously waiting for the moment that I could get my hands on this album. Before I get to that, allow me a moment to give a bit of history. I got on the A7X bandwagon a little late. City of Evil found itself in my hands on a whim, I had heard a lot about them and found that I was a little curious. That album turned out to be a great trip into the past, with their LA Guns look and a sound that seemed to be an extension of the era that gave rise to my music fandom. Next up was seeing them live (with Coheed & Cambria) and wow, what a show. I also managed to get my hands on Waking the Fallen, another excellent, albeit different sounding album. Now they have released their second major release, the highly anticipated (by some anyway) follow-up to City of Evil. Would it, nay, could it live up to its predecessor? The anticipation is killing me! I shredded the plastic and slipped the disk into the CD player; with trembling fingers I pressed play and waited to be blown away. Blown away I was, just not in the good way. I found Avenged Sevenfold to be a big letdown from the glorious glammed up and tatted highs of City of Evil. In its place is an album that feels devoid of any real creativity, there was no life flowing through this collection of tunes. Okay, I admit to liking a couple of songs and liking moments throughout the remainder of the disk but taken as an entire work there was no soul, no feeling behind the writing. A comparison that seems to be apt, although this case is not quite as extreme, would be to look at Avenged Sevenfold as a new Sugar Ray. Now before you get your gears turning, hear me out. This is nowhere near the level of what Mark McGrath and crew did, but it does have some relevance. Go back to Sugar Ray's Floored album, you know as well as I do that you have a copy of it somewhere in your closet. That album was not half bad, it displayed a variety of styles that still felt like the same band, but in retrospect it was more like a demo for the populace. Once "Fly" hit it big, that became the formula. Everything after that point sounded like "Fly." The heavy style, the punk style, they just went by the wayside in favor of the quick buck by jumping on their own bandwagon...full text |
| Heavymetal |
| Avenged Sevenfold has evolved from a metalcore band into the mainstream. Their last album, City Of Evil opened the band up to a whole new group of fans and they even had a video on MTV's TRL. That sort of mainstream commercial success will immediately draw accusations of selling out, and Avenged Sevenfold is an extremely polarizing band. Their latest album is Avenged Sevenfold, and it sees them moving even further away from metal and more into the hard rock genre. There are still metal moments, and the guitar work of Synyster Gates is excellent, but Avenged Sevenfold delves into several other genres as well. The album ends with a couple of unique tracks. "A Little Piece Of Heaven" is an 8 minute opus with everything from brass to gothic choruses to female vocals to pop hooks. The closer is "Dear God," a twangy country flavored song....full text |
| Absolutepunk |
| Unlike a couple of Bruce Springsteen's previous records, The River can never be called a flawless effort. Arguments are made by some that Born To Run is a perfect work. With less fervor, people have called The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle or Darkness On The Edge Of Town perfect. I'm not going to argue the degree of perfection found in any Springsteen album. But with The River, a 20-song, 83-minute behemoth of a double-disc record, there are certainly flaws. But with those flaws came yet another sign of Springsteen's musical genius that was the most captivating part of rock and roll in the 1970s and 80s. Springsteen originally recorded 10 songs for a record called The Ties That Bind, and that record was going to be released in late 1979. Instead of releasing that, Springsteen went back to the drawing board and wrote some darker material after penning a song called "The River." The result was the double-disc that saw light of day in the fall of 1980. While the record didn't have the compact and straightforward storytelling themes of Born To Run and Darkness, it does feature some of Springsteen's most compelling songwriting. Any fan familiar with The Boss' work will tell you that The River is perhaps his most polarizing work. Setting aside the double release of Human Touch and Lucky Town, the batch of songs found on The River couldn't be more varied. Constantly praised for being the middle ground between the glorious moments of Born To Run and the despair found on Darkness, The River shows rock and roll in the way Springsteen thought it should be written. "Rock and roll has always been this joy, this certain happiness that is in its way the most beautiful thing in life," Springsteen said. "But rock is also about hardness and coldness and being alone...I finally got to the place where I realized life had paradoxes, a lot of them, and you've got to live with them." The resulting album is one that might not flow as well as previous Springsteen releases (which flowed impeccably), but a record that spawned some of the strongest single tracks of his career. The strongest single was "Hungry Heart," which is notorious for being originally written by Springsteen for The Ramones. Instead of giving them the song, producer Jon Landau convinced Springsteen to put it on The River. Landau made a good call, as the song became Springsteen's most successful single to date. It reached No. 5 on the U.S. pop singles chart, a catchy and danceable hit that foreshadowed some of the sounds listeners would hear on the immensely popular Born In The U.S.A. For every upbeat number like "Hungry Heart," "Sherry Darling," "Two Hearts," "Ramrod" or "Out On The Street," Springsteen gives us a slow-tempo ballad like "Independence Day" or the brilliantly orchestrated "Point Blank." Songs like "Stolen Car" (which foreshadowed Tunnel Of Love), "Drive All Night" and closer "Wreck On The Highway" are much slower tracks that must be appreciated for their melodies and special construction. Songs like these are where Springsteen's words cut deepest, with weaving lyricism making an impact when delivered over calmer tides. "Stolen Car" is a vastly underrated song, as Springsteen's personal, slowly delivered lyricism casts an image of a troubled youth: "At first I thought it was just restlessness that would fade as time went by and our love grew deep / In the end it was something more I guess that tore us apart and made us weep / And I'm driving a stolen car down on Eldridge Avenue / Each night I wait to get caught, but I never do....full text |
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