Avenged Sevenfold is releasing their fourth song off of their seventh studio album, The Stage, as their second promotional single for that said album. Primarily written by guitarist Zacky Vengeance, this upcoming single is one of their most thrash metal influenced songs of this record and it is entitled “God Damn”. It is set to release with a music video on March 21.
Judging by the lyrics, I would say that this song is built around the concept of the people of America blindly voting for a president to become elected, proven by lines like “Pledge allegiance, no flag” (chorus) & “Blind follow the blind & now the one eyed man is king” (Verse 2).
Also, this song seems to be an attack on Americans treating that said president like a god, proven by lyrics like: “God nation, god damned” (chorus) and “Hey-it goes beyond big brother in the sky” (verse 2). Coincidentally, just after their recent album release, which includes this song, guitarist Zacky Vengeance has stated a comment that blabbermouth.net quoted that “President Donald Trump is a scary phrase.” Does that give you any more clues?
The song’s instrumental composition starts with a continuous alternation between fast-paced, chugging, palm-muting, distorted guitar work with light acoustic guitar notes while at a tempo of about 240 beats per minute, which reminds me of more of a Megadeth style pace, because Megadeth compared to Metallica is known for more speed. At the same time, I feel that this song is somewhat technical, which is more of a Metallica-type of thrash metal. The drumming is done with an aggressive extreme metal style, pretty much like blast beat drumming. Then, as soon as M. Shadows goes into his trash metal- esque, aggressive, gritty, slightly guttural “Ohhhhh!”, the song goes into its main verse riff involving fast chord changes and tremolo note picking. Then towards the bridge of the song before the final chorus, a complete contrast takes place with more high pitched acoustic guitar composition arrangements with M. Shadows’ still aggressive thrash metal style vocals.
This is a great satirization song that shows how disgusting our society can be. It’s like Megadeth style 80’s thrash metal meets slightly downtuned instruments of the New Wave of American Heavy Metal. When it comes to politics in particular, even when people say God bless America, this song provokes listeners to keep in the back of their mind, “What if God doesn’t care?”