Hail To The King is essentially the Nickelback of Avenged Sevenfold records – people claim to hate it, but it's far and away their most popular. Though don't take my word for it, just listen to vocalist M. Shadows!
One fan recently tweeted at Shadows and the band, saying "Hot take: The Hail to the King album by [Avenged Sevenfold] is amazing and deserves respect. So many people chaff at the 'simple riffs' and classic hard rock sound, but the album has incredible complexity under the surface, if you really listen."
Shadows saw the tweet and responded "Hail to the King (the song) streams more than double any other tracks we have weekly. The album is on track to out-sell all the others… yet a portion of the fan base acts like it was a failure by all accounts." He later adds that fans seem to avoid recommending Hail To The King to new listeners despite the title track being far and away the most popular.
For those wondering, "Hail To The King" currently has 412.4 million streams on Spotify. The next song after it is "Nightmare" with 262.8 million listens, followed by "Afterlife" with 172.6 million. I'd imagine part of the perceived dislike for the album is from some of the initial reviews, which heavily compared Hail To The King to Metallica to the point of plagiarism (clearly it wasn't).
But I mean, who hasn't been influenced by Metallica in the realm of metal? And what band doesn't suffer from the "it's their most popular album but fans claim to 'hate' it syndrome" anyway? Maybe Hail To The King isn't the most representative of a certain Avenged Sevenfold sound to some, but the album is undeniably popular.
Avenged Sevenfold recently wrapped up their long-awaited new album, as we found out by way of drummer Brooks Wackerman who posted a photo to Instagram to with producer Andy Wallace (Slayer, Sepultura, Faith No More) simply captioned "done!"
