Waking the Fallen1. "Waking the Fallen" - 1:42
2. "Unholy Confessions" - 4:45
3. "Chapter Four" - 5:44
4. "Remenissions" - 6:06
5. "Desecrate Through Reverence" - 5:38
6. "Eternal Rest" - 5:12
7. "Second Heartbeat" - 7:00
8. "Radiant Eclipse" - 6:09
9. "I Won't See You Tonight (Part 1)" - 8:58
10. "I Won't See You Tonight (Part 2)" - 4:44
11. "Clairvoyant Disease" - 4:59
12. "And All Things Will End" - 7:40
Current line-up:M. Shadows: Lead vocals
Synyster Gates: Lead guitar, backing vocals, piano on singular occasions
Zacky Vengeance: Rhythm guitar, backing vocals
Johnny Christ: Bass guitar, backing vocals
The Rev: Drums, backing vocalsSo the very first thing we notice from the line-up is not only the odd names that are clearly not their actual names, how did this start out? Well, obviously they were in their mid-teens by the time they created the band, this was just some silly imagination of some kids goofing around, it’s funny how they still go by those names and everyone knows them by those names. Something else that really sticks out here, everyone does backing vocals, later on in their career it gets really interesting with the multiple voices, not only on the studio albums, but also on some of the live recordings, we see everyone contributing to vocals.
I won’t got into all of the songs too much, but I do want to explain the strengths of this album which actually stay amazingly consistent, as well as some of the standouts which I may expand on.
Waking the Fallen is an often overlooked intro, the early Avenged Sevenfold sure knew how to set the mood, ‘cuz both To End the Rapture and this self-titled intro are great, too bad they seemed to have stopped doing this kind of thing, maybe we’ll see it again in the future.
Unholy Confessions, the second official music video, included footage from some of the footage taken from live shows, it’s still on the Hopeless Records channel. I never really cared for either of those music videos – frankly, some of A7X’s music videos are outright terrible, this one I could take it or leave it, but take a look at the video for Shepherd of Fire for instance, wtf is that? Anyway, Unholy Confessions was arguably a breakthrough song for Avenged, it may not have been unitl City of Evil that they really started gaining popularity, but Unholy Confessions feels like a gateway song between the early material and the newer.
Chapter Four, along with the previous song, is a live concert hit, when I saw them they played both of these at the end of the concert acting as kind of an encore, the entire time I was anticipating at least one Waking the Fallen track, and while these may not be my absolute favorites, they’re fucking stun-ning live, and especially Chapter Four, has some amazing vocal melodies, catchy as hell.
Remenissions is the first song where I feel this needs to be highlighted, a lot of songs on this album have crushing guitar rhythms during the verses, this is mostly what drives the songs that would other-wise not be as great, gladly no particular member on this band gets overlooked, they really do all con-tribute to the band really well. Desecrate Through Reverence I’d say shares my feelings about guitar melodies and rhythms, but what puts Remenissions miles ahead, let me start with the pre-chorus, beautiful harmonies mixed with harsh vocals build up the tension like no other. The undoubted topping though, is that chorus, it’s arguably one of the best Avenged Sevenfold choruses. Not only with enjoyable catchy vocal melodies, but damn, that acoustic guitar in the background is so pretty, it’s no Sidewinder, but it’s doing alright.
Eternal Rest I decided to pair up with And All Things Will End, because I feel like Eternal Rest could’ve been an amazing closer, the “Eternal Rest” chanting has “epic” written all over it. Still, it doesn’t live up to the epicness of the latter, the outro of And All Things Will End kinda feels like it has a psychedelic vibe to it and I love it. I dunno, I still think to this day that the very first second of Eternal Rest is just.. weird, but the short guitar passage afterwards is pretty cool. Also, guitar riff after the first verse is magical, heads ‘a bangin’.
Without further ado, the best song off the album and easily a top 10 Avenged song, Second Heartbeat, ladies and gents, this is their crowning achievement regarding metalcore. I’m not even huge on metalcore, but everything about this, man. Intro is not too complex but it builds tension. The second verse is crushingly heavy. There’s yet another chanting section included, that’s a lot of chanting recorded on this album, but this is the best, even better in a live setting. Then the chorus, it’s not whiny and cheesy like most of the popular metalcore choruses. Last but not least, the guitar solo in the end might just be the best moment on the album, it bursts out into a great conclusion after some fast picking, straight into…
Radiant Eclipse, booyah! This song has my favorite verses of the album, too bad it also has the worst chorus, that’s a shame, this could’ve been one of the best songs on the album, cause the instrumenta-tion totally kicks ass here.
I’m going to remain very consise about the I Won’t See You Tonight series. Absolutely love the first part, and while the second is also pretty good, I always find myself looking forward to the part 1 chorus reprise, so yeah, I could do without the second.
Clairvoyant Disease is another great WTF song, nothing too crazy, has some groovy unisons going on, and awesome transitions between slow soft verses and heavy energetic choruses. Don’t find myself returning to this one too often but I like it alright.
This album was not their biggest achievement on an absolute measurement, but when you take into account the popularity they gained since their previous record, this was the most important album, this is what got them on the Warped Tour of 2003, which eventually lead to a solid fanbase, as well as their album hitting the 100.000 copies sold mark. Slowly but surely these guys were starting to get huge.
Topic: The Avenged Sevenfold Discography Thread (Read 2147 times)