Hail to the King by Avenged Sevenfold

Hail to the King, Avenged Sevenfold's sixth studio album, came out through Warner Bros. Records on August 23, 2013, and it's the Huntington Beach band stripping back to the heavy metal and hard rock that made them, a record written as a salute to their influences. Mike Elizondo produced it, and it's the only album to feature drummer Arin Ilejay, alongside M. Shadows on vocals, Synyster Gates and Zacky Vengeance on guitars and Johnny Christ on bass.

It was also the first A7X album with no musical contributions from founding drummer Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan, and they dedicated the bonus track "St. James" to his memory. The riffs are big and swaggering, built for arenas, and it worked: number one on the Billboard 200 and, for the first time, the UK Albums Chart, plus Canada, Brazil, Finland and Ireland. The title track sat atop Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart for 11 weeks, and "Shepherd of Fire" followed it to number one.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.