Avenged Sevenfold's Hail The King : An Album Review

I never liked these guys, but they sell a shit-ton of t-shirts. When I taught high school English in Kansas City back nearly a decade ago, every other t-shirt was either Avenged Sevenfold, Fall-Out Boy or Bob Marley. I listened to some Avenged Sevenfold back in their City Of Evil days, and it did not move me. The guitars were finger-plucky, weirdly erratic, like darkly electric blue-grass, and the vocals were operatic, but they did not move me.

This new Hail To The King record is a lazy continuation of Avenge's already turgid reign. As a progressive metal record, AHTK fails. As a retrospective hat-tip to the slim history of late 80s hair metal, Judas Priest, or any Ozzy album featuring Zakk Wylde, the album serves as a catchy karaoke track of drunk sung nostalgias. I can't shake the notion that this record would have killed in the early 90s. But this ain't the early 90s. Avenged Sevenfold hallows-out a fine tribute to their predecessors and influences, but, like so much of their cultural fodder, I predict they'll shrink in the wash and fatten moths.