Music Review - Afterlife by Avenged Sevenfold

Avenged Sevenfold are a metal band from Huntington Beach, California since 1999. The song Afterlife is a single from their self titled 2007 album "Avenged Sevenfold" written by their drummer Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan who unfortunately passed away in 2009 (5th from the left). According to rhythm guitarist Zacky Vengeance (1st from the left), Afterlife is "about a man who dies early and finds himself in Heaven. Upon entering, he realises that he has too many things to do on Earth and to go back and make it right, he must escape from the Afterlife". I recommend you to listen to the song as I walk through it briefly with some timestamps.

This song starts off with an amazing string section which then crescendos along with The Rev's crash cymbals into the duel guitar intro of the song (0:17) by lead guitarist Synyster Gates and rhythm guitarist Zacky Vengeance. Bassist Johnny Christ pulls off a bass riff (0:38) that leads into the first verse of the song. Then vocalist M Shadows lays down his vocals as the song enters a catchy riff with a solid drum backbeat with some cool fills. We enter the pre chorus (1:15) as it transitions with double bass drums and a fill into the catchy laidback chorus (1:25), which has some background vocals to complement the lyrics. The chorus stops for a one beat rest and goes straight back into verse 2 (1:43) with some different lyrics, background sound effects and added vocal layers, then back into pre chorus again (2:20). The chorus has added lyrics (2:47) and then it enters the amazing bridge starting with more strings, chugging triplet guitars and double bass drums (3:05) and then lyrics (3:23) which go back and forth between M Shadows and The Rev. Then it's the part you have all been waiting for, the amazing vocal scream by The Rev leading to the guitar solo (3:58) by Synyster Gates which is incredibly fast and complicated along with the drums increasing with snare and bass drum hits. Then you hear The Rev amazingly growl into some laughing over the guitar going into a whammy (4:34), leading back into the chorus (4:58) as the song finishes and fades off slowly.


I genuinely think this song can be appreciated by fans of all different genres of music!

Here are some links for you to listen to the song! I recommend you to listen to the original full version of the song, as the music video unfortunately cuts out great parts of the song.

Lyrics - https://genius.com/Avenged-sevenfold-afterlife-lyrics
Song Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhy__BcFtbM
Song Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/track/7zAt4tdL44D3VuzsvM0N8n?si=VvwDLdQRSiKH5i6YpuU2sA
Song Live in the LBC 2008- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-qkJw8q-uA
Music Video (Radio edited audio) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIRNdveLnJI


Rating - an amazing 10/10

Selin Hurriyet