Avenged Sevenfold - Bat Country

“…NNNNNNNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.” – M. Shadows

I know that popular rock and metal songs, especially when they get a lot of mainstream radio airplay, do sometimes get looked down on by fans in the scene. But I don’t think I’ve ever met a man, woman, child, escaped lunatic, animal or other who didn’t enjoy Bat Country.

We’re definitely not going under the radar this week, oh no – if you hadn’t heard the song by now I’d assume the rock you were living under has just been tipped over by the Mars Rover. It catapulted California metalcore outfit Avenged Sevenfold into international recognition like a dead cow into an enemy castle and with bloody good reason – it’s a stomping good time for all!

Its popularity was obviously helped in no small part by the song and the video being steeped in references to “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”, the brilliant Hunter S. Thompson roman-à-clef adapted into the fair-to-middling cult classic movie. My sixth form English teacher would be thrilled I used the phrase roman-à-clef there, but maybe not so much by me calling “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” fair-to-middling.

So come on in, enjoy some gloriously shitty mid-2000s CGI and all the booze, drugs and bats you can handle courtesy of this week’s Rock Song of the Week. If you play it quietly, I’m calling the police.