In the summer of 2005, a bunch of kids from Huntington Beach decided to set their career on fire. Or at least, that’s what it looked like to the die-hard metalcore scene at the time. Avenged Sevenfold had already built a massive, sweaty following with Waking the Fallen, an album defined by guttural screams and brooding, gothic energy. Then came City of Evil.
It was loud. It was garish. It was unapologetically bright.
Instead of the usual cookie-cutter breakdown patterns, fans were hit with dueling guitar harmonies that sounded like Iron Maiden on speed and a lead singer who had traded his signature scream for a gritty, melodic rasp. It changed everything. Suddenly, the "scene" kids were sharing space with classic rock boomers and TRL teenagers. It was a weird time for heavy music.
The Vocal Shift That No One Expected
The biggest talking point of the City of Evil album remains M. Shadows’ voice. People love to spread the rumor that he "blew out" his vocal cords and had to stop screaming. That’s not exactly the whole story. While Shadows did have surgery for a minor vocal issue, he actually worked with vocal coach Ron Anderson—the same guy who trained Axl Rose and Chris Cornell—specifically to learn how to sing with grit without destroying his throat.
He wanted to be a singer. Not just a screamer.
The result was a nasal, aggressive, yet melodic tone that defined tracks like "Bat Country." It’s a polarizing sound. Honestly, some people still can't stand it. They think it’s too "whiny" or polished compared to the raw aggression of their earlier work. But you can't deny the technical jump. To go from Unholy Confessions to the operatic soaring of Seize the Day in just two years is a massive leap in discipline.
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The band was obsessed with being "classic." They didn't want to be the next At the Gates; they wanted to be the next Guns N' Roses. You can hear that ambition dripping off every track. It’s expensive-sounding. It’s confident. It’s also incredibly long, with many songs pushing past the five or six-minute mark, which was a gutsy move during the peak of the three-minute radio edit era.
Shredding the Rulebook (And Everything Else)
Synyster Gates and Zacky Vengeance turned into a two-headed monster on this record. If you grew up playing Guitar Hero, you know "Beast and the Harlot." That opening riff is a frantic, technical exercise that most metalcore bands of the era couldn't touch. They moved away from the "chug-chug" simplicity of the mid-2000s and leaned heavily into neoclassical shredding.
It’s fast. Really fast.
The solo in "Bat Country" is a masterclass in twin-guitar harmony. They weren't just playing notes; they were composing movements. Take a song like "Sidewinder." It’s an eight-minute epic that ends with a full-blown acoustic flamenco guitar duel. Who does that on a mainstream metal record? It’s ridiculous. It’s over the top. It’s exactly what made the City of Evil album a commercial juggernaut while simultaneously alienating the "true" underground metal fans who thought acoustic guitars were for sellouts.
The drumming, too, was on another planet. The late Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan was a force of nature. His work on "Blinded in Chains" uses these frantic, syncopated double-kick patterns that feel like they're going to derail at any second, but they never do. He was the secret sauce. He wasn't just a drummer; he was a songwriter who understood drama.
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Fear and Loathing in Orange County
You can't talk about this album without talking about Hunter S. Thompson. "Bat Country" is a direct homage to Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The music video—directed by Marc Webb, who later did the Spider-Man movies—was a fever dream of bats, drugs, and desert landscapes. It was all over MTV.
It was a cultural moment.
For a lot of us, this was the gateway drug. It was the album that convinced kids who only listened to pop-punk that maybe Metallica wasn't just for their dads. It bridged a gap. It took the theatricality of 70s arena rock and stuffed it into a 2005 production wrapper. The lyrics were darker than the music suggested, dealing with the downfall of empires, biblical imagery, and the crushing weight of fame. "The Wicked End" even features a full orchestra and choir.
Think about that. A band that was playing VFW halls a few years prior was now hiring 40-piece orchestras.
The Production Gamble with Mudrock
The band brought back producer Mudrock, who did their previous record, but they gave him a massive budget this time. They recorded at NRG Studios in North Hollywood. They wanted a "dry" sound—very little reverb, very "in your face." This is why the snare drum sounds like a gunshot and the guitars feel like they're vibrating right against your eardrums.
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It’s a tiring listen. Honestly, listening to the whole City of Evil album in one sitting is exhausting because there is zero breathing room. It’s an assault of information. Every gap is filled with a drum fill or a guitar lick. Some critics at the time, like those at Rolling Stone or Pitchfork, found it bloated. They weren't entirely wrong. It’s an ego-heavy album.
But that ego is what gave it legs.
Impact and Legacy
Look at the landscape of modern rock today. You see the influence of this record in bands like Ghost or even some of the more technical modern metalcore acts. It gave bands permission to be "extra." It killed the idea that you had to be "tough" and "street" to be a metal band. You could wear makeup, play flamboyant solos, and write power ballads about your dead friends, and you could still be the biggest band in the world.
Warner Bros. took a massive risk signing them and letting them make an album that sounded nothing like their debut. It paid off. The album went platinum. It put them on the main stage of every major festival. It also gave them the creative capital to make their Self-Titled "White Album" later on, which was even more experimental.
How to Revisit City of Evil Today
If you haven't listened to it in a while, or if you're a new fan coming from their later, more progressive stuff like Life Is But a Dream..., you have to frame it correctly. Don't look at it as a metalcore album. It’s a hard rock opera.
- Listen for the Bass: Johnny Christ gets overshadowed by the guitars, but his work on "M.I.A." is actually incredible. He holds the chaos together.
- Ignore the Haters: People will always say Waking the Fallen was better because it was "heavier." Weight isn't just about screaming; it's about composition.
- Check the Lyrics: Dig into the story of "M.I.A." It’s one of the few songs from that era that actually tried to tackle the psychological toll of the Iraq War without being overly preachy or partisan. It’s just sad and heavy.
- Watch the Live Footage: Go back and find clips of them at Graspop or Download Festival in 2006. They were playing these songs at breakneck speeds, proving they weren't just "studio magic" creations.
The City of Evil album isn't perfect. It’s loud, it’s arguably too long, and M. Shadows’ voice sounds like it was recorded through a distorted megaphone half the time. But it has more personality in its first ten minutes than most modern rock albums have in their entire runtime. It was the sound of a band deciding they were going to be legends, whether the old-school fans liked it or not.
If you want to understand why Avenged Sevenfold is still filling stadiums while their peers have mostly faded into nostalgia acts, you have to start here. It’s the pivot point. It’s the moment they stopped being a "scene" band and started being a "stadium" band. Grab a pair of decent headphones, skip the laptop speakers, and let the chaos of "The Wicked End" actually hit you. It’s worth the headache.