Avenged Sevenfold - Afterlife

What this video is

Released March 12, 2008, 'Afterlife' arrived as the third single from Avenged Sevenfold's self-titled 2007 Warner Bros. album — a record that debuted at #4 on the Billboard 200 and won the Kerrang! Award for Best Album. The video captures the band at peak mainstream breakthrough, bridging their metalcore origins with arena-metal ambition. The song's themes of premature death and reluctant transcendence — written by…

Why it matters

Represents the apex of Avenged Sevenfold's transition from post-metalcore to mainstream heavy metal spectacle. The video's combination of performance staging and symbolic concept storytelling codified a visual template widely adopted in 2000s arena metal. As one of the band's most streamed catalog…

The director

Wayne Isham (born December 2, 1958, Vinita, Oklahoma) is an American film and music video director who attended UC Santa Barbara and has helmed over 150 videos since the 1980s for artists including Metallica, Bon Jovi, Mötley Crüe, Britney Spears, Ricky…