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Avenged Sevenfold (sometimes abbreviated as A7X) is an American heavy metal band from Huntington Beach, California, formed in 1999. The band's current lineup consists of lead vocalist M. Shadows, rhythm guitarist and backing vocalist Zacky Vengeance, lead guitarist and backing vocalist Synyster Gates, bassist and backing vocalist Johnny Christ, and drummer Brooks Wackerman. Avenged Sevenfold is known for its diverse rock sound and dramatic imagery in album covers and merchandise. Avenged Sevenfold emerged with a metalcore sound on the band's debut Sounding the Seventh Trumpet and continued this sound through their second album Waking the Fallen.

The band's influences include Guns N' Roses, Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Pantera, Bad Religion, Dream Theater, Motorhead, Metallica, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones, In Flames, At the Gates, Helloween, Queensryche, System of a Down, AC/DC, NOFX, Alice in Chains, Black Flag, Corrosion of Conformity, Suicidal Tendencies, Misfits, Slayer, The Vandals, Soundgarden, Rage Against the Machine, Korn, Slipknot, Deftones, Beastie Boys, Biohazard, Type O Negative, Anthrax and AFI.  The band has been categorized under many genres of heavy music. Mainly categorized as heavy metal, hard rock, progressive metal and metalcore, Avenged Sevenfold's music has evolved over most of the band's career. At first, the band's debut album Sounding the Seventh Trumpet consisted almost entirely of a metalcore sound; however, there were several deviations from this genre, most notably in "Streets", which shows a punk rock style, and "Warmness on the Soul", which is a piano ballad. On Waking the Fallen, the band displayed a metalcore style once more, but added more clean singing and leaned a bit more towards metal and bit less close to hardcore. In the band's DVD All Excess, producer Andrew Murdock explained this transition: "When I met the band after Sounding the Seventh Trumpet had come out before they had recorded Waking the Fallen, M. Shadows said to me 'This record is screaming. The record we want to make is going to be half-screaming half-singing. I don't want to scream anymore. And the record after that is going to be all singing'."  On City of Evil, Avenged Sevenfold's third album, the band chose to abandon the metalcore genre, using a more hard rock and heavy metal style. Avenged Sevenfold's self-titled album, however, has some experiments with other music genres than that from City of Evil, most notably in "Dear God", which shows a country style and "A Little Piece of Heaven", which is circled within the influence of Broadway show tunes, using primarily brass instruments and stringed orchestra to take over most of the role of the lead and rhythm guitar. Nightmare contains further deviations, including a piano ballad called "Fiction", progressive metal-oriented track "Save Me" and a heavy metal sound with extreme vocals and heavier instrumentation on "God Hates Us". The band's sixth studio album Hail to the King shows more of a classic metal sound and a riff-oriented approach. On their newest album The Stage, the band explores further into progressive metal, blending it with elements of thrash metal. In the past, Avenged Sevenfold has also been described as alternative metal, screamo, and pop punk metal.  The band has been criticized for "not being metal enough". Vocalist M. Shadows responded to this with, "we play music for the sake of music, not so that we can be labeled a metal band. That's like telling us we aren't punk enough. Who cares?" Avenged Sevenfold is one of the notable acts of the New Wave of American Heavy Metal.
Avenged Sevenfold