Avenged Sevenfold - O2 Academy, Leeds

Talk about good timing. After some brief faffing around with photo passes at the door, Harry and I walked into the venue 30 seconds before Avenged Sevenfold came onto stage which gave us just enough time to scramble to the photo pit / get a vantage point to watch the band from. I’m quite a fan of the Leeds O2 Academy purely because those of us who are shorter in stature always manage to get a good view of the stage no matter where you stand.

Avenged Sevenfold open with Nightmare, the title track from their latest album, and quickly tore through Critical Acclaim and Welcome To The Family which is where M Shadows took time to introduce their new drummer, Dream Theatre's Mike Portnoy.

Tonight it feels like Avenged Sevenfold are on a mission to blow the roof off the Academy. And they succeed. It’s a show that has the capacity crowd chanting Sevenfold between songs and huge circle pits developing despite the venue being relatively small and absolutely packed out.

Beast And Harlot from City Of Evil and Buried Alive from Nightmare give way to a slowing of the pace by the band as M Shadows takes some time to talk about losing their drummer Jimmy “Rev” Sullivan at the end of last year and the gap that it’s left to all the members of Avenged Sevenfold. This genuinely moving speech is meet with cheers and a chants of "Jimmy" going around the venue, which seems to take members of the band a little off guard.

So Far Away is written for Jimmy and is a slow, heartfelt ballad which brings the crowd to a halt but also serves to highlight two things. Firstly, just how powerful M Shadows voice is. Few vocalists have the power and range that he possesses and it’s a genuine pleasure to hear him sing. The second point is less positive and it has nothing to do with the band. The sound has been fine while the heavier songs are being played now seems muddy and the vocals keep being lost in the mix. It’s a shame really as the everything else has been brilliant up to now.

Avenged Sevenfold finish their set off with Afterlife, God Hates Us, Unholy Confessions and Almost Easy. All four are crowd favourites and seem to be greeted with a louder cheer than the previous one.

Stone Sour have one tough act to follow. Even without all the pyro’s Avenged Sevenfold tore Leeds a proverbial new one and no band truly wants to follow that.

Stone Sour want to prove a point. They are tonight's headliners and they are more than a match to the challenge Avenged Sevenfold have laid down. They come onto the stage and open with Mission Statement, a chugging, fast paced song, that feels a little like metal-by-the-numbers to be honest but it gets the crowd going and firmly on their side for the rest of the set. They follow this up with Reborn before Cory asks the crowd if they want to hear his 70’s radio presenter voice. You’ve got to give it to him, he’s smooth and gets the crowd right where he wants them. Made Of Scars, Say You’ll Haunt Me, Get Inside and Unfinished before it all goes a bit acoustic for Bother.

Stone Sour Close their set with 30/30-150 which whips the Academy into another frenzy before they departed the stage and the crowd left the Academy emptied out in one sweating mass.

Overall tonight belong to Avenged Sevenfold on just about every level. They had more t-shirts in the crowd, their songs just seem better, their circle pits where larger and their show more impressive. That’s not to take too much away from Stone Sour who impressed with sold, heavy songs. It’s just that they all blended into one another after the first few.