Avenged Sevenfold's HAIL TO THE KING Debuts at Top of Billboard's Album Chart

HAIL TO THE KING, the sixth studio album from award-winning rock band Avenged Sevenfold, debuted at Number 1 on the Billboard Top 200 Album Chart today, selling upwards of 159,400 units, making it the biggest first week sales debut for a rock album this year. HAIL TO THE KING, released by Warner Bros. Records on August 26, 2013, also has the most units sold in its first week for a rock album since September 2012. The album marks the band's second consecutive Number 1 debut on the Billboard Top 200.

HAIL TO THE KING debuted atop the charts in multiple countries around the world including Canada, Ireland and the United Kingdom, solidifying the band as a global force in music. Around the world, Avenged Sevenfold's audience continues to grow exponentially as the band consistently sells more successive albums globally with each release, building to this pinnacle of Number 1, Top Five and Top Ten debuts internationally.

HAIL TO THE KING's success has been fueled by the album's first single and title-track, "Hail To The King," which is Number 1 for the third consecutive week on both the Mediabase and BDS Active Rock Charts. "Hail To The King" is the band's fifth Number 1 single on those charts.

Even though the band had a break between records, Avenged Sevenfold really never stopped. A number of key collaborations across various platforms helped widen the band's reach for HAIL TO THE KING. The band made an unprecedented appearance as characters in the Call of Duty Black Ops II video game in November 2012. The game was the biggest selling video game of all time and featured the band's performance of a song written for the game, 'Carry On,' which then went on to Top the Billboard Monitor chart on January 13, 2013. That same month the band launched a transmedia campaign that included a series of online and real world fan activations involving contests, scavenger hunts, and creative visual content. The week prior to release Avenged Sevenfold launched a global iTunes stream across 106 countries leading into street date.

HAIL TO THE KING has received overwhelming reaction from fans and critics alike, who are calling the album an artistic tour de force commensurate with hard rock's legendary albums. Avenged Sevenfold is currently gracing the covers of multiple magazines around the world including Billboard, Revolver, Guitar World, Metal Hammer, RockSound, Kerrang with more to come. The band has been called "the biggest American hard rock band of the 21st Century," "the sound and force of hard rock and metal in the new millennium," "heavy metal's new kings," "bona fide metal gods," "the new rulers of post-millennium metal," and more. HAIL TO THE KING, has been called "Avenged Sevenfold's masterpiece," "the most eagerly awaited hard rock album of the year," "their crowning achievement," "their boldest," "superior," and the list goes on.

The band recently announced the dates for their massive world arena tour in support of HAIL TO THE KING. The U.S. dates in October will feature Deftones and Ghost B.C. and is the band's first full scale American tour since 2011. Many of the upcoming European dates have added capacity due to overwhelming demand. See below for a complete list of upcoming live dates.

Avenged Sevenfold Live Dates
October
3rd Chicago, IL Allstate Arena
5th Indianapolis, IN Klipsch Music Center
6th Cincinnati, OH US Bank Arena
8th Baltimore, MD 1st Mariner Arena
9th Boston, MA TD Garden
11th St. Louis, MO Verizon Wireless Ampitheater
12th Bloomington, IL US Cellular Coliseum
13th Detroit, MI Joe Louis Arena
15th Atlanta, GA Aaron's Amphitheatre at Lakewood
16th Orlando, FL Amway Center
18th Houston, TX Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pav
19th Dallas, TX American Airlines Center
20th San Antonio, TX AT&T Center
22nd Omaha, NE CenturyLink Center
23rd Oklahoma City, OK Chesapeake Energy Arena
26th Las Vegas, NV Mandalay Bay Events Center

November
6th Helsinki, Finland Hartwall Arena
8th Stockholm, Sweden Hovet
9th Oslo, Norway Oslo Spektrum
11th Frederiksberg, Denmark Falconer Salen
12th Hamburg, Germany Sporthalle
14th Munich, Germany Zenith
15th Frankfurt, Germany Jahrhunderthalle
17th Bochum, Germany Ruhrkongress
19th Amsterdam, Netherlands Ziggo Dome
20th Paris, France Zenith Paris
22nd Vienna, Austria Stadthalle
23rd Milan, Italy Forum
25th Barcelona, Spain Pavelo Olimpic
26th Madrid, Spain Palacio Vistalegre
27th Lisbon, Portugal Campo Pequeno
30th Manchester, UK Manchester Arena

December
1st London, UK Wembley Arena
3rd Dublin, Ireland The O2
5th Birmingham, UK LG Arena

HAIL TO THE KING is the follow up to Avenged Sevenfold's 5th studio album, Nightmare, which earned the band its highest ever debut on the Billboard album chart when it took the Number 1 spot and spawned three Number 1, hit-singles "Nightmare", "So Far Away" and "Welcome To The Family". The band has achieved Diamond, Platinum and Gold awards for album sales in nearly a dozen countries and have sold out arenas the world over and headlined some of the worlds biggest and most prestigious music festivals playing to over one million people.

Need more Music Theatre News in your life? Sign up for all the news on the Spring season, discounts & more...