Avenged Sevenfold

About

Also known as: A7X, Avenge Sevenfold

Avenged Sevenfold built their reputation by refusing to stay in one lane. Starting out with a metalcore sound on their debut Sounding the Seventh Trumpet, they gradually shed the screaming vocals and genre trappings by the time City of Evil arrived, leaning into a classic heavy metal style that won them a much wider audience. The self titled fourth album pushed things further, and then tragedy hit when founding drummer Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan died in 2009. Rather than fold, the band recruited Dream Theater's Mike Portnoy to help finish and tour behind Nightmare, which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. From there, Hail to the King went full on arena metal and hit number one in multiple countries, while 2016's surprise release The Stage took a sharp left turn into progressive metal territory. Their eighth album, Life Is But a Dream..., released in June 2023, pushed the experimental side even further. Outside of their studio output, A7X wrote four original songs for the Call of Duty: Black Ops series, later collected on the 2018 EP Black Reign. Over eight studio albums they have sold more than 8 million records worldwide.