Band: Avenged Sevenfold
Album title: Nightmare
Label: Roadrunner Records
Distributor: Roadrunner Records – Concreteweb Promotion Office - CNR
Release date: 26/07/2010
Release: CD

If there’s one band that started 2010 the worst, it must be Avenged Sevenfold. On December 28, 2009, they lost their drummer and close friend The Rev. They were already recording a new album at that time. Many fans had a double feeling after his death. On the one hand, they felt miserable about it, but on the other hand, they were frightened that Avenged Sevenfold would call it a day. Luckily for them, the band never thought about splitting up and kicked back stronger than ever with the new album Nightmare.
Mike Portnoy, the ex-drummer of Dream Theater, decided to do the drums for Nightmare. Knowing that it was unable to replace The Rev, he did a hell of a good job.
The album opens with the first single of the album and which also is the title track, called Nightmare. It is a very powerful song which starts like a lullaby, but  which is quickly followed by blasting drums and shredding guitars.
The second song is called Welcome To The Family and during this song, they go back to the basics of City Of Evil. Danger Line, So Far Away and Victim must be the most sentimental songs on the album, but that element also makes those two first songs quite tedious. Where they go back to City Of Evil in Welcome To The Family, in Danger Line, Avenged Sevenfold goes even further back in time to the times of Unholy Confessions. In this song, there is an intermezzo by a piano, followed by a guitar riff. This clearly is an ode to The Rev.
Avenged Sevenfold clearly isn’t afraid to use more classical instruments. In Buried Alive, they use the violins, which were also used on the previous album. Buried Alive also is much more down-tempo. After this song, we get Natural Born Killer, in which the tempo goes up again and which sounds like a real thrash metal song in the beginning.
God Hates Us must be the most special song. It sounds very different from everything they have done in the past. It is the most aggressive song they’ve written so far. We hear blast beats and M. Shadows even screams and grunts !
When you know that The Rev had written Fiction all by himself and had finished it only three days before he died, you really get goose bumps while listening to the song. I wonder if Avenged Sevenfold will be strong enough to play this song live.
The album ends with Save Me, a song of almost eleven minutes, which is the ultimate ode to their lost friend.
Nightmare isn’t a real concept album, but you can feel that almost everything on the album is for and about their beloved friend, The Rev. Avenged Sevenfold couldn’t have said goodbye to him in a better way than this.

91/100

Nick Tronckoe.