Avenged Sevenfold: City Of Evil

(Herald rating: * * *)

Screaming down the drag strip are Avenged Sevenfold. Thing is, you know how those flimsy looking yet extremely speedy cars often flip, float and burst into flames? So do Avenged Sevenfold, and it's usually because the annoying whine of singer M. Shadows starts up.

But City Of Evil is some of the most exciting and epic rock'n'roll around at the moment. In fact, this album is a snorting and snarling mongrel that is as much for fans of classic rock as it is for those into metal. And it's a must for fans of Guns N'Roses because the instruments are more nasty than the Gunners/Stone Temple Pilots off-shoot, Velvet Revolver.

In calling their singer annoying, don't get this band wrong because those exciting bits are plentiful, most notably on the rumbling hillbilly metal of Burn It Down, the staunch Sidewinder, and the brutish rock of Seize the Day.

But the nine-minute epic, Strength of the World, shows how some of this album ends up like a slog because the balladry comes across as insincere, and the squealing finale is interrupted, by Shadows' voice and a naff orchestral arrangement. But the real challenge is putting up with a whiner for more than an hour.

Label: Warner