Avenged Sevenfold "Bat Country"

[Nicholas2.0]

Source: theprp.com
"Avenged Sevenfold's new single 'Bat Country' is now set to impact at radio on August 09th. A video for the song was recently shot and should begin airing shortly."

Presumably, just Active Rock (and maybe Rock) radio.  This song was written about and inspired by Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and its author/lead character (played by Johnny Depp), "gonzo" journalist Hunter S. Thompson.  Sadly, not long after it was written, Thompson killed himself, so now the song serves as a bittersweet tribute.  The title is taken from the scene in the beginning where Hunter, while speeding down a desert highway, hallucinates and sees huge bats swooping and screeching all around the car.  Minutes later, his attorney (Benicio del Toro), after taking over driving duties, decides to pick up a hitchhiker (played by Tobey Maguire).  Del Toro pulls over onto the shoulder and says, "Let's give the boy a lift."  Hunter yells, "Wait!  We can't stop here!  This is bat country..."

Since A7X's logo is a skull with bat wings, the song title is perfect.

"Beast and the Harlot" and "Burn It Down" aside, this is the first official single from their album City of Evil, which came out last month.  Obviously, I love it to pieces, but I honestly have no idea if Active Rock radio is ready to embrace a band like this, considering the success of Atreyu, Eighteen Visions, Killswitch Engage and Shadows Fall has all been limited on Active Rock thus far.

[American Idiot]

These guys are a damn good band, but yeah as you said, I can't see any radio format jumping all over this either.

[alexcuse]

it's the 6th most played song on KROQ this week, which should help it spread onto other alternative stations

[friday]

I was surprised to see this at #8 on Wednesday's Rock Countdown on MTV2. I would've thought this'd be relegated exclusively to Headbanger's Ball, but I guess not. It's OK, at first. It's pretty catchy, and the video looks really cool, but something's off about this song, at least on first impression anyway. I can't really describe it, but I guess it just sounds too mainstream metal for me, whatever that means. Doesn't make much sense though, since I think the bridge in Atreyu's "Right Side of the Bed" is one of the best riffs of the year, yet that seems like pretty standard metal fare. Probably more to it than just the instrumentation, though.

They had a video that got played a lot of Fuse last year, but I can't remember for the life of me what it was called. I do remember I wasn't very fond of it, though. But I'd like to know for my curiosity anyway.

[Nicholas2.0]

Well shut my mouth. KROQ's apparently been playing it since July. And I just so happened to catch the full thing (well, the radio edit, anyway) on KPNT driving home from work yesterday. Talk about a surprise! I had to drive the long way all the way back around the neighborhood because I was almost home. This song may have a better chance than I thought...Who could've known?

Also, I caught the "Burn It Down" video on Fuse at my girlfriend's house, in addition to a slew of other current rock videos that I hadn't seen before, which made me a kid in a candy store. ("Burn It Down" was played over live footage, with crowd noise added to the beginning and end, much like Social D's "Don't Take Me for Granted" video earlier this year.)

friday, I believe you're talking about "Unholy Confessions" (my number one song of last year.)

[jond7699]

It's not as good as earlier material :( I was pysched to hear this but I was kind of disappointed

[Nicholas2.0]

If anyone's missing the screams of yore, M. had surgery last year and now he physically can't scream anymore. He's had to create new melodies in place of sections where he used to scream (which I would've witnessed more of at the Warped Tour had I gotten to see more than "Bat Country" and "Unholy Confessions") and I imagine he's had to retire some songs all together. :'(

I'm amazed that others (American Idiot and jond7699, so far) have actually heard any of their previous work.

[[upsilon]™]

I like this. It was #20 just a few minutes ago on the Rock Countdown. The tongues in the video are creepy.

[Chato]

Nu-metal

[American Idiot]

This isn't nu-metal at all.

[jdmasta289]

I saw the video on Fuse the other day and I hated it. I wouldn't classify it as straight-up nu-metal. It's definitely active rock - definitely loud.

[halo19]

Well it really isn't nu-metal at all. It's like calling Shadows Fall nu-metal (although that's an even bigger stretch). I don't hate nu-metal, but there's definitely a difference from a band like this and bands like Korn.

[Chato]

I still think it's numetal , numetal doesn't necessarily have to sound like Korn , even Limp Bizkit sounded different than Korn .
Nu-metal bands try to sound dark and/or evil and heaviness seems to be more important than decent songwriting sometimes , sometimes they include rap parts in their songs .
I don't hate numetal in general as well (there are actually some bands I really like) , but most of the time it's just style over substance to me , Avenged Sevenfold are no exception to the rule .
I don't want to criticize anyone who likes this band but to me it's just average Nu-metal .

[crash46]

#56 and going for adds tomorrow. Not bad...

Seriously, about the surgery thing, I had barely even noticed the lack of screaming on the album. The music did seem a little less hardcore, but they made up for it with some strong, well-defined hooks. Still, M. must have really been pushing his vocal chords to the limit if he's really physically unable to scream.

So Kroq probably is making the difference with this one. Now it's time for 89x to jump on board with this, like they did with "Unholy Confessions" a year ago. Mediabase has two spins next to their call letters, but I don't know if those are true add spins or just People's Choice spins (although if it is the latter, it must have won once).

[Pipa]

This was an odd song. I'll have to hear the radio edit.

[pen]

gliben said:

I still think it's numetal , numetal doesn't necessarily have to sound like Korn , even Limp Bizkit sounded different than Korn .
Nu-metal bands try to sound dark and/or evil and heaviness seems to be more important than decent songwriting sometimes , sometimes they include rap parts in their songs .
I don't hate numetal in general as well (there are actually some bands I really like) , but most of the time it's just style over substance to me , Avenged Sevenfold are no exception to the rule .
I don't want to criticize anyone who likes this band but to me it's just average Nu-metal .

A lot of bands try to sound dark and/or evil. My Chemical Romance and A.F.I. have dark imagery in their songs. Most actual metal bands do as well, and I'll be damned if you're gonna call Shadows Fall, In Flames, and Lamb Of God nu-metal.

On the flipside, a lot of nu-metal bands like P.O.D. and Pillar have positive imagery in their songs and most other nu-metal bands like Cold and Linkin Park focus on sadness, pain, and personal strife. Not on sounding dark and/or evil.

It's up for debate what actually classifies a band as nu-metal, but having dark and/or evil imagery is definitely not one of the hallmarks of the genre, and it's hard to see how you could mistake it for one.

[halo19]

Uh, Shadows Fall are even farther from nu-metal than A7X. They kind of sound like an updated version of old Metallica although that's a stretch. Besides, what I meant was that this band is in a totally different vein than nu-metal bands. Just because it's metal that attracts to all kinds of rock fans does not make it nu-metal. By your definition you just used, Black Sabbath is also nu-metal.

But I think that it's the hardcore part of the sound that is attracting the alternative format, even though it's more of a hard rock song. But many active rockers are conservative stations who play more "dinosaur" music.

[[upsilon]™]

I LOVE this song. It's been in my head for hours.

[Matt4319]

68 48 AVENGED SEVENFOLD Bat Country 233 126 107 3.040

Into the top 50 with about as healthy a bullet as "Stockholm Syndrome" had at this point (and that peaked at #30). I heard this once a few days ago, and while it's better than the other one I heard from them (can't remember the name), I'm not into them enough yet to say that I like it.

[Nicholas2.0]

Blender just put A7X in the 50's on their annual Hot 100 list. I'm not sure how comfortable I am with that. I mean, I want them to be rewarded for the music they make, but I kinda feel like, since they've been "all mine" for almost two years now, things are coming to them a little too quickly already. Especially since there aren't any other young metal bands connecting the way they are right now. It feels like they're getting too much of the spotlight or something. They're my favorite young metal band, so good for them, but I just don't know about all this yet.

I saw the "Bat Country" video finally on Launch at my buddy's house last night. That and "Helena" will be the videos to beat this year. It's kind of like when I dressed as Hunter for Halloween and had my buddy (different guy) dress as Dr. Gonzo. I masterminded the shots for a whole roll of film recreating scenes from Fear and Loathing and now one of my favorite bands of the past two years shoots a music video largely inspired by the film. I was totally amused and in awe when I saw The Rev (the drummer) in the convertible with the flyswatter, swatting at the imaginary bats.

[Chato]

penance said:

gliben said:

I still think it's numetal , numetal doesn't necessarily have to sound like Korn , even Limp Bizkit sounded different than Korn .
Nu-metal bands try to sound dark and/or evil and heaviness seems to be more important than decent songwriting sometimes , sometimes they include rap parts in their songs .
I don't hate numetal in general as well (there are actually some bands I really like) , but most of the time it's just style over substance to me , Avenged Sevenfold are no exception to the rule .
I don't want to criticize anyone who likes this band but to me it's just average Nu-metal .

A lot of bands try to sound dark and/or evil. My Chemical Romance and A.F.I. have dark imagery in their songs. Most actual metal bands do as well, and I'll be damned if you're gonna call Shadows Fall, In Flames, and Lamb Of God nu-metal.

On the flipside, a lot of nu-metal bands like P.O.D. and Pillar have positive imagery in their songs and most other nu-metal bands like Cold and Linkin Park focus on sadness, pain, and personal strife. Not on sounding dark and/or evil.

It's up for debate what actually classifies a band as nu-metal, but having dark and/or evil imagery is definitely not one of the hallmarks of the genre, and it's hard to see how you could mistake it for one.

First of all I have to apologize for two things ,
the reason why it took me so long to answer is that I was away on vacation for a week and didn't have an internet connection , the other thing is that I made a mistake , I didn't want to say that nu-metal necessarily has to sound dark/evil it's just very common for nu-metal bands to do so .
But what's more important is that to me Avenged Sevenfold seem to be more about style than substance , but that's just my opinion .

I don't think In Flames can in any way be compared to Avenged Sevenfold , they started as a typical Göteborg death-metal band and have just recently begun to move away from being a strict Göteborg death-metal band , still they don't sound like Avenged Sevenfold at all .

[crash46]

The radio and video edit, which removes the spoken word intro and the final 32 bars of the song, will take some getting used to. Especially the intro; it's only 6 seconds long and arguably the most memorable part of the whole song.

[[upsilon]™]

I must have the radio edit then... Still love this song.

[Ragin]

I really like this song, I need to check these guys out a little more.

[tortuga]

In the line "my hand is on the trigger" I noticed that MTV replaces the word "trigger" with some honking noise. >:(

[American Idiot]

tortuga said:

In the line "my hand is on the trigger" I noticed that MTV replaces the word "trigger" with some honking noise.  >:(

As usual, MTV just continues to ruin the world of music today.

[[upsilon]™]

LOL! The have the weirdest bleeping ratio imaginable. They bleep "trigger" and like other seemingly harmless words, versus leaving others like "ass" and even excessive skin exposure untouched. It's just...weird!?

[halo19]

And it's also okay to say "bullet" in Fall Out Boy's context, but not Sum 41's.

[Nicholas2.0]

tortuga said:

In the line "my hand is on the trigger" I noticed that MTV replaces the word "trigger" with some honking noise.   >:(

It's screeching tires, but yeah.  I actually don't mind so much, because it fits the scene of the video.  It took me by surprise when I first saw it on MTV, but it shouldn't have.  I hate to gush about them so much but, damn, that video is so badass.

[tortuga]

nicholas said:

tortuga said:

In the line "my hand is on the trigger" I noticed that MTV replaces the word "trigger" with some honking noise.   >:(

It's screeching tires, but yeah.  I actually don't mind so much, because it fits the scene of the video.  It took me by surprise when I first saw it on MTV, but it shouldn't have.  I hate to gush about them so much but, damn, that video is so badass.

gotta love those slutty old ladies.