10 Most Blatant Ripoffs In Rock History
4. This Means War - Avenged Sevenfold
No one can really blame a band like like Avenged Sevenfold for resting on their laurels. I mean, when you have classics like Bat Country and Almost Easy already under your belt, your legacy is all but secure in the halls of metal for the rest of time. You could coax by on easy mode...as long as you don't step on someone else's territory.
For their album Hail to the King, A7X were looking to pay tribute to all of the bands that shaped them as young players, from the sounds of Guns N Roses to Black Sabbath. When it comes to This Means War though, you could tell that they had a bit too much reliance on the kings of thrash metal. From the way that M Shadows' melody flows to the slow and groovy riff that plods along, this is just a runthrough of Metallica's Sad But True with different lyrics.
It didn't really seem like they did too much to hide the similarities either, given that Shadows' melody could be given James Hetfield's lyrics and work just as well in that context. As much as this might be a friendly type of homage from one metal band to another, you have to have nerves of steel if you're going to co-opt a melody this blantantly.