Avenged Sevenfold - Nightmare Lyrics

- Release date: July 2010 -

Nightmare is the fifth studio album by American heavy metal band Avenged Sevenfold released on July 27, 2010 through Warner Bros. Records. It was produced by Mike Elizondo and mixed in New York City by noted engineer Andy Wallace. Nightmare is the first Avenged Sevenfold record without founding member James "The Rev" Sullivan performing drums due to his death in December 2009, although he had a large role as a songwriter, and his vocals were pre-recorded for the songs Fiction and "Save Me". Nightmare debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 selling 163,000 copies, surpassing its predecessor in first week sales. In February 2011 Nightmare received the Golden God's "Album of the Year Award."

Bassist Johnny Christ stated in an interview with Ultimate Guitar about the writing process and subject matter of Nightmare: "We definitely had made the decision that it was going to be a concept record. We wanted to have a dark concept record, sort of like The Wall or Operation: Mindcrime. At the same time we wanted to incorporate some of what we had done in the past with the guitar work. We wanted to make it heavier in general. Throughout all of that, the songs that came out were musically already as dark as we wanted them to be. Then lyrically it took a different turn when Jimmy passed. The lyrics then became mostly – not 100 percent – but mostly to do with his death and his life."