Avenged Sevenfold - Waking The Fallen

Like some odd jigsaw puzzle of punk rock, hardcore, pop, heavy metal, and goth, Avenged Sevenfold pound Waking the Fallen – the latest full-length from these black-clad Californians – into the scene’s ears. This album is truly unique, except the quintet’s sprawling musical ideas are too scattered, too random, and not nearly cohesive enough. Overturning hardcore’s traditional song length of two minutes for tracks that often stretch past the six minute mark, Avenged Sevenfold fill the disc’s extra moments with expanded bridges and virtuous guitar solos that would make Slash smile, but forget the key ingredient to music: writing actual songs. Waking the Fallen is simply too rambling, it’s an album that is little more than a few dozen fretboard dancing riffs smashed together into songs that attempt to be epic. However, it is commendable that Avenged Sevenfold do attempt to expand metal into hardcore and goth, but this time those sights are aimed a little too high as the music feels underdeveloped, lopsided, and disorganized. [www.avengedsevenfold.com]