AVENGED SEVENFOLD’S “NIGHTMARE” COMES TO LIFE

Avenged Sevenfold may not be a hair metal, exactly — Guns N’ Roses (particularly Use Your Illusion-era Guns N’ Roses), who we will argue this week are very much not a hair metal band, seem to be their biggest influence — but they certainly seem to embody the spirit of hair metal, and have succeeded where so many modern hair metal bands have ultimately failed: they have created catchy pop metal and found a mass audience. And while we still haven’t heard all of their new album, Nightmare, as of yet, what we have heard suggests that it’s gonna continue in the same vein; in other words, if Avenged Sevenfold was Use Your Illusion III and Chinese Democracy was Use Your Illusion IV (or, perhaps more accurately, Use Your Delusion), than Nightmare will pretty much be Use Your Illusion IV.

Here’s the new video for the title track from Nightmare. They’re calling this the “unedited” version of the clip, although I assume they mean “uncensored.” ‘Cause, y’know. Unless all this footage cut itself together, it looks pretty edited to me.

Nightmare comes out July 27 on Warner Bros.

-AR