M. SHADOWS ranks AVENGED SEVENFOLD albums, from worst to best | Page 2 | Revolver

M. SHADOWS ranks AVENGED SEVENFOLD albums, from worst to best

"Just how I'm feeling today"
avenged sevenfold m shadows SHINN, Travis Shinn
photograph by Travis Shinn

Avenged Sevenfold frontman M. Shadows has revealed his personal ranking of his band's entire discography. The O.C. metal vocalist saw that Revolver tweeted out our own ranking of his band's seven studio full-lengths, and in response, he figured he'd chime in and offer up his own ordering — with the qualifier that it's "just how I'm feeling today," so the ranking could change if you asked him tomorrow.

Regardless, here's how the frontman chose to rank all the A7X albums, from worst to best:

7. Hail to the King
6. Sounding the Seventh Trumpet
5. Avenged Sevenfold
4. Nightmare
3. City of Evil
2. Waking the Fallen
1. The Stage

A few things here. First, it's interesting that he decided to place Hail to the King last on the list, considering that that record's title track is far and away the band's most popular song on streaming services. Second, while he considers the band's most recent album (not counting their as-yet-announced 2023 LP), The Stage, to be their best release so far, he also thinks that their sophomore album, 2003's Waking the Fallen, is their second best.

Old-school A7X fans have been grumpy for two decades now that the band steered away from metalcore after Waking, so it's cool to see that Shadows still has an immense amount of pride about that record, even if it sounds nothing like the band's recent output.

Last, Shadows' personal ranking of his discography is totally different than Revolver's in every way except one — we both agree that Nightmare is their fourth best LP overall. Otherwise, Shadows ranks Sounding the Seventh Trumpet a notch higher than we do, and he considers the Stage to be better than Waking, City of Evil and their 2007 self-titled, the last of which we granted the No. 1 slot.

See Shadows' ranking in tweet form below.