Beast and the Harlot
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| “Beast and the Harlot” | |||||
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| Single by Avenged Sevenfold from the album City of Evil |
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| Released | 2005 | ||||
| Format | CD 7/12" Vinyl |
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| Genre | Heavy metal | ||||
| Length | 5:41 | ||||
| Label | Warner Music Sony BMG |
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| Writer(s) | Avenged Sevenfold | ||||
| Producer | Mudrock and Avenged Sevenfold | ||||
| Avenged Sevenfold singles chronology | |||||
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"Beast and the Harlot" is a single by the American band Avenged Sevenfold, taken from their 2005 album City of Evil. So far, the song has hit #19 on the US Mainstream Rock and #44 on the UK Singles Chart.
The actual song is about the fall of Babylon from the Book of Revelation, (particularly chapter seventeen) from which many quotes are taken, such as "Seven headed beast, ten horns raise from his head", "hatred strips her and leaves her naked", and other references.[1] The word "harlot" means "prostitute". The Harlot referred to in the song is Great Babylon, quoted in the song "Fallen now is Babylon the great." On Avenged Sevenfold's All Excess DVD, during the director for this video's commentary, he says that M. Shadow's lyrics for this song about the fall of Babylon is comparing Babylon to Hollywood, showing many Hollywood cliches such as the young, innocent boys being corrupted and losing their souls.
The song features M. Shadows' newer brand of vocals with no hardcore screaming (although there is one scream in the introduction to the song, transferring into his newer vocal style which was removed when the song was featured in Guitar Hero II), as well as a more traditional metal sound as opposed to their previous work--with heavy and fast riffs and a relatively normal song structure (with the exception of the guitar solo, which comes after the first chorus rather than the second, atypical of a three verse song).
The song's rapid main riff was voted as the 14th greatest riff ever by the guitar magazine Total Guitar in March 2007. Total Guitar wrote: "The main riff to Beast And The Harlot is a great piece of dropped-D riffing with Zacky and Synyster cleverly placing the second part of the riff across the beat to create an aggressive syncopated feel, once again avoiding all the usual metal clichés."
The song is featured as a playable track in the video games; Guitar Hero II as well as Burnout Revenge. Although, in Burnout Revenge, the song is titled "Beast..." for censoring reasons. Both versions are altered slightly the introduction in Guitar Hero 2 the scream is removed and in Burnout Revenge the introduction was removed comepletely.
The art for the cover of the "Beast and the Harlot" single was done by Avenged Sevenfold's close friend Cam Rackam.
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[edit] Music video
The music video stars Avenged Sevenfold, as well as several actors/models, and features about 150 fans from the Los Angeles area. The video was shot on October 5 and 6 of 2005 at the Mayan Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
The video is based on the idea of corruption. The director wanted a way to show how someone would look without a soul. This was shown as a black substance devouring the person's body till it was completely black showing the body with out the soul or and empty human shell. Actress Elizabeth Kelly aids the band in their mission until she is corrupted at the end of the video. Former WWE Diva Joy Giovanni appears in the video.
[edit] Track listings
CD:
- Beast & The Harlot [Radio Edit]
- Burn It Down [Live]
DVD:
- Beast & The Harlot (Audio)
- Beast & The Harlot (Video)
- Bat Country (Video)
[edit] Inspiration
Shadows and the songwriting crew drew heavily from biblical literature, history, and old literature, including, as previously mentioned, segments of "The Book of Revelation," as well as Dante's "Divine Comedy of Hell." Historically, the sexually deviant queen of Babylon provided the basis for the "Harlot" as well as the recurring theme of sexual temptation in the music video.
Dante provided inspiration with his views of the corrupted meanings of the 7 and 10. In a clean sense, they should represent the 7 Sacraments and the 10 Commandments. However, The Dantean (and M. Shadows' interpretation) is that the 7 ("seven headed beast") represents a corruption of these values, or the 7 deadly sins themselves. The 10 ("10 horns raised from his heads") represents the corruption of the 10 commandments, most specifically adultery, which was promoted by the Queen of Babylon.
Since Babylon collapsed, ("fallen now is Babylon the great") presumably because of its moral deficiencies, it can be assumed that Dante and Shadows were correct.
The black tar which represents the departed soul in the corrupted victims in the video is derived from Dante's 5th Malebolge in Hell. The demons wreck the sinners (in that case, those who betrayed the church) with hooked spears.
[edit] References
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