Avenged Sevenfold - "Life Is But a Dream..."

This album is like a dream you just woke up from and now can't remember

I haven’t actually listened to an A7x album since 2013’s Hail to the King. And while that album gave me three completely badass songs which I still JAM to ten years later, the album (as a whole) was really meh. Sevenfold has released two albums in the intervening years, and I may need to go hunt them down later, but I’m not sure it would be worth it if “Life Is But a Dream…” is any indication.

I expect Avenged Sevenfold to be…unruly. They’re the type of band who don’t really adhere to any sort of rules or expectations. This allows them to basically do whatever they want and make the music they want to make. But they often fail to self-edit - their heaviest songs, especially, often sound like there’s no filter. It’s legitimately anything goes. Personally, I think this approach works against them more often than it works in their favor.

This album’s eclectic approach feels exemplary of that. There are a lot of different sounds here - every song is something unique. In a sense, it’s kind of the flip-side of everything I loved about the Sleep Token album. There’s no cohesion; nothing is tying all of these various elements together. To use an analogy, it would be as though Elves and Dwarves decided in the middle of the Battle of Five Armies that they really just couldn’t get over ancient animosities.

I think “Cosmic” is beautiful, and I really enjoy the composition of “Nobody” - the band is really in sync here and it’s easily the best track on the album. I also enjoy the final track of the three-song suite, “(D)eath”, because it’s interesting to hear A7x go really jazzy and pseudo-rat pack. But the suite is like a microcosm of the full album - it just doesn’t work as a unit. Overall, I’m only keeping five of the eleven tracks for use in any playlists.

Rating: Orange