Perpetual controversy magnets Avenged Sevenfold recently spoke to MTV about the work on their next album. The band recently cancelled their UK tour to concentrate on the record.

As for the cancellation, frontman M.Shadows explained:

We've been touring on this record for 16 months now, and we're like, 'Enough's enough.' We were kind of going through the motions for a while, playing the same songs, so we were like, 'We need to write some new stuff.

Shadows has high aspirations for the record as well:

The last thing we're going to do is write City of Evil part 2 or Waking the Fallen part 2, It's not going to be a thrash record or old-school or anything like that. I know it's going to be a sound that no one's heard -- kind of like when Korn came out, they were the first ones to start that whole scene and they sounded different than everybody. We want to do that for our own generation. […] It's just going to be gritty, We want it to be a cool record, not some polished crap just 'cause we've got a couple songs on the radio now.

The band released two albums on indie Hopeless Records before releasing City Of Evil on Warner.