Top 10 Rock/Metal Albums Of 2013

7. Avenged Sevenfold - Hail To The King

Avenged-Sevenfold-Hail-to-the-King It seems that Avenged Sevenfold were destined to hit the big time, even before their number 1 album Hail to the King was released this year. Having been hailed as the next big thing since Waking the Fallen catapulted them into the spotlight all those years ago, they have steadily grown in stature with each release (even if their eponymous 2007 effort was a slight blip to many people, myself included). Given the success of the band's first album after the death of drummer James "The Rev" Sullivan, Nightmare, there was a general sense in the metal community that the bands next release would end up topping the charts. Fortunately, Avenged Sevenfold have produced an album which fully justifies the hype, and have presented themselves to the rock world as a bonafide, unrelenting headline act to sit alongside legends such as Iron Maiden and Metallica - proven by the fact that they are set to headline 2014's Download Festival to a crowd of roughly 100,000 people. With Hail to the King, the band have written a more traditional sounding mainstream metal record, and in the process have received a lot of criticism for "selling out" and paying tribute to their heroes a little too closely. While it is indeed obvious that the band have been heavily influenced by their idols when writing Hail to the King, they manage to do so while still retaining the the signature A7X sound - mainly through M. Shadows singing and Synyster Gates unmistakable guitar work. Highlights on the album are the slow, thumping This Means War, a song with no lack of chug that you can easily imagine crushing the audience in a live setting, and the unabashedly badass Doing Time, in which M. Shadows radiates swagger as he channels his inner Axl Rose. With Hail to the King, Avenged Sevenfold have done exactly what Metallica did with their self-titled release in 1991 - made the transition from a popular metal band into a world-beating hard rock outfit and exponentially increasing their popularity in the process. Metallica went on to become the biggest rock band of all time. Who can say that Avenged Sevenfold won't do the same?
 
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21. London. Into mostly Rock/Metal/Prog music. Big horror/fantasy/sci-fi fan. Massive Liverpool FC fan.