Sounding the Seventh Trumpet

Sounding the Seventh Trumpet is the debut album by Avenged Sevenfold, from Huntington Beach, California, recorded while the members were still teenagers in high school. It was first released on Good Life Recordings and later reissued on Hopeless. Built on fierce screamo and metalcore, it crosses in hardcore, melodic death and classic-metal elements, marking a rough but strong ambition. M. Shadows' screams, Zacky Vengeance's riffs and the busy drumming of James "The Rev" Sullivan put the band's early impulse straight into sound. The opening "To End the Rapture" was re-recorded with newly joined Synyster Gates, gaining full-band thickness. Against the ferocity of "Turn the Other Way" and "Darkness Surrounding," the punk-flavored "Streets" and the piano-led ballad "Warmness on the Soul" already show a breadth of expression. It does not match later polish, but the prototype of a band that would go on to cross genres is marked here, along with raw energy.