Avenged Sevenfold - Hail To The King Lyrics

Hail to the King is the first single from Avenged Sevenfold's sixth studio album Hail to the King, released on July 15, 2013. The song was premiered live on July 17, 2013, at the Ford Festival Park in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

The song tells the tale of a tyrannical king who strikes down any who oppose him. M. Shadows explained to Kerrang! magazine: "'Hail To The King' is a question about how society sees itself. From day one, people have elected kings and leaders, people have followed presidents, and they cry over who the new pope is. Sometimes you've got to step back and say, 'What are we doing here? Why do we need all of these people to tell us how to run our lives?' That goes for God above and Satan below. Who's the king? We have many kings.

It was one of those things when we said the statement, sang it in a song and it was like, 'wow, that really strikes a nerve and means something.' We knew that some people would look at it as us saying, 'We're the kings,' but we were willing to undergo that amount of criticism, when really it was something a bit deeper about society."

Vocalist M. Shadows told Kerrang! magazine that the song writing for Hail to The King involved an organised, dedicated approach. He explained: "We tend to come in and talk about the vibe we want for the song, more than coming up with riffs. Then we build around that vibe, writing riffs that work with that. We try not to waste too much time on things that don't work. As soon as something takes us out of the vibe we're creating, we throw it out."

The Hail To The King album artwork was created by southern Californian artist Cam Rackam. The cover shows a shot of a skeleton king and is titled 'Deadly Rule.' "I wanted the cover to be serious, tough, and conquer-esque," Rackam told Noisecreep. "[The album] stirs like an anthem for the modern warrior. So when it came to the painting, I was inspired by the final shot in Conan the Barbarian - referenced from the Frazetta painting - where he is sitting at the throne in contemplation of the chaos in his kingdom. I loved that idea of the warrior king."

The official music video premiered on the Metal Hammer website on August 16, 2013. The video is the first to feature drummer Arin Ilejay, as well as being the first Avenged Sevenfold video to feature a drummer since the video for "Dear God", which was the last to feature drummer The Rev.