Avenged Sevenfold's 2003 record Waking The Fallen was a pretty big deal. It was their first with lead guitarist Synyster Gates and bassist Johnny Christ, and has since gone on to sell over 1 million copies in the United States.
Avenged Sevenfold drastically changed their sound from punk-infused metalcore to more traditional, progressive heavy metal on their 2005 album City Of Evil, most notable forgoing all screamed vocals.
In an episode of the Trax podcast where Avenged Sevenfold breaks down their own songs. vocalist M. Shadows said he feels Waking The Fallen set itself apart from its contemporaries with its heavy infusion of Bad Religion-styled punk rock.
Shadows also notes that Avenged Sevenfold had to change up their sound on City Of Evil if they were going to incorporate all the influenced they wanted to, which makes sense – Waking The Fallen would've sounded weird with a lot of what happened on City Of Evil thrown in.
"Waking The Fallen had its own parameters, right? You have to think at the time… because a lot of people forget quickly that there was bands like Poison The Well and Vision Of Disorder that were doing what Waking The Fallen was doing before us. They were influencing us. Waking The Fallen had that big breakthrough and then people go 'oh they invented that whole [sound].' It's like, no, but we had more punk rock involved, while none of those bands had kind of mixed punk rock [into their sound].
"The thing on Waking The Fallen was like Bad Relgion and NOFX meets Pantera and Metallica. I think the other bands were being more influenced by New York hardcore and some different things and like, the Quicksands and the Shelters of the world.
"I think that had its own parameters, where we were… it was kind of that 'sing scream sing scream' [style]. It didn't really lend itself to go full-on Ennio Morricone, but once we were doing only singing vocals we really wanted to spread our wings musically because that was where we were going to make the kind of difference in what people were hearing. It wasn't going to be back and forth vocally. We really spread our wings on ['Strength Of The World'] we and we really started bringing in all the influences."
Check out the full episode below, which takes a deep dive into the 2005 song "Strength Of The World."
