From their metalcore roots, to their transition to heavy metal/hard rock, and their more recent journeys into the realm of avant-garde metal, Avenged Sevenfold are no strangers to reinvention. However, their 2013 album “Hail To The King” was perhaps the group at their most commercially friendly.
That intentional stab at essentially making an arena rock album became a bit more successful than the band had ever planned though, with it’s 3x platinum-certified title track ultimately becoming the biggest song in their catalog. As of press time, that single has over 645 million plays on Spotify alone, with its closest competitor, 2010’s “Nightmare“, closing in on 395 million plays.
However, “Hail To The King” became yet another hit record in a long line for the group, not every song on it is held in high regards by the band themselves. In fact, per a recent interview with Bradley Hall, the band’s vocalist M. Shadows listed the song “Crimson Day” as one of his least favorite among the Avenged Sevenfold‘s entire catalog. He said of that track:
“I think ‘Crimson Day‘ is a throwaway. That’s not a great ballad. We’ve had much better ballads. I think we’ve always done pretty good ballads and ‘Crimson Day‘ is the lowest on my list of things we’ve ever done.”
As for his favorite moment on that record, he cited the song “Planets“, offering, “I also think the coolest thing we’ve ever done on that record is ‘Planets,’ and of course it’s the least listened to. To me, it is the coolest thing on that record.”
In that same interview, Shadows also spoke of the band’s overall approach when it came to writing and recording “Hail To The King” album, stating:
“‘Hail To The King‘ was a response to the fact that we were a big band, but everywhere we went none of our songs could be played anywhere like in a bar, like we have nothing that lives up to AC/DC or Metallica’s Black Album or all these records that we love, all of our stuff’s a little too complex, a little too complicated, a little too neoclassical.
So we started really cutting close obviously to wearing our influences very much on our sleeves in this sort of dumbed-down version of rock music, and that’s not a shot on those bands because they do it brilliantly, they do it better than us, but we wanted to try our hand at doing some things like that, it’s very unnatural for us. It’s not what we do.
It’s simplified, but we were able to, I think we’re smart enough guys to piece together, ‘Oh it’s simple drums, it’s a more scooped sound on the toms, yeah it’s a lower volume of guitar that actually feels bigger when you put it with the bass, it’s you know a vocal that is very simple, there’s not a lot of harmonies. It’s one vocal that’s kind of yelling at you.’ It’s almost like can you take this vocal melody and sing it to your kid as a lullaby and so we took all those things and we made ‘Hail To The King‘.”
As for the title track itself, he went on state:
“Unfortunately, ‘Hail To The King‘ worked. it’s our biggest song and I wouldn’t have it any other way. It’s a funny thing that that’s the song that is almost at a billion views and it’s the song that people hear first. I don’t know if that’s more of a commentary on us or more of a commentary on the typical rock listener, but yeah ‘Hail To The King‘ is one of those things where it’s just a funny little experiment.”
[via Loudwire]
