Scream Aim Fire

Scream Aim Fire turns the debut's momentum into speed. It was recorded at Sonic Ranch, outside El Paso in Texas, with Colin Richardson producing again. The title track's chug and the sprint of "Waking the Demon" belong more to the vocabulary of thrash metal than of metalcore. It is also the first album on which the band put singing plainly at the front. The huge chorus of "Hearts Burst Into Fire" and the six minutes and forty-eight seconds of "Forever and Always" that close the record carry as much weight here as the fast songs do. Commercially this was the first summit: number four on the Billboard 200, 53,000 copies in its first week. Sony Music's own profile records that it reached number one on Oricon's international chart in Japan. Japan had it first, on 23 January, with Britain on 28 January and the United States on 29 January. The touring that followed was on the same scale, including Taste of Chaos — thirty-one American cities co-headlined with Avenged Sevenfold. May brought their third Japanese tour, and in October they stood on the Loud Park stage for the first time, as second headliner.