10 Greatest Metal Albums Of The '00s

At the turn of the century, it seemed to be anyone's guess as to where the next wave of metal was going to be heading. Though the veins of nu metal still held a lot of power at the time, you couldn't really say that bands like Deftones or Korn were necessarily new faces in the game anymore. When we did meet the new kids on the block though, we got a good throwback to all the bombast metal had on City of Evil.

While most of Avenged Sevenfold's '00s output is some of the highest quality that you can imagine, City of Evil stands apart from them as being the first album where everything started to click. After deciding to focus more on singing, M Shadows really came into his own as a vocalist here, taking the heaviness and morphing it into something that you can actually sing along to in concert.

And speaking of riffs, Synyster Gates may be the most influential metal guitarist of the modern age because of this album. Having both the punk rock spirit and a fine attention to detail, these are meant to be your new favorite riffs from the moment that you listen to them. Considering nu metal had a limited shelf life, this was the real sign that metal wasn't going anywhere any time soon.