Bat Country
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| “Bat Country” | |||||
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| Single by Avenged Sevenfold from the album City of Evil |
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| A-side | N/A | ||||
| B-side | N/A | ||||
| Released | September 26, 2005 | ||||
| Format | CD 7/12" Vinyl |
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| Genre | Heavy Metal | ||||
| Length | 5:13 | ||||
| Label | Warner Bros. Records | ||||
| Writer(s) | Avenged Sevenfold | ||||
| Producer | Murdock and Avenged Sevenfold | ||||
| Avenged Sevenfold singles chronology | |||||
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"Bat Country" is a single by the American hard rock band Avenged Sevenfold from their 2005 album, City of Evil. The song's main influence comes from Hunter S. Thompson's 1971 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and the title itself also comes from a line from the book in which Raoul Duke, the alter-ego pseudonym of Thompson himself, is on his way to Las Vegas while being affected by various drugs, and thus hallucinates, seeing huge bats and manta rays in the sky. With this, he screams to his companion, Dr. Gonzo, "We can't stop here. This is bat country."
The song has been used in several video games including EA Sports' NHL 06, Madden NFL 06 and SSX On Tour. It also had a short cameo in Big Momma's House 2. The song is on the soundtrack of the extreme mountain bike film New World Disorder 7: Flying High Again.
The song appears on the FOX tv show Bones.
Avenged Sevenfold won 'Best New Artist' at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards for "Bat Country".
The following quote is frequently referred to throughout the song and is shown at the beginning of the music video.
"He who makes a beast out of himself, gets rid of the pain of being a man." - Dr. Johnson
Contents |
[edit] Formats and track listings
Single
- Bat Country
- Beast & The Harlot (Live From The Warped Tour)
- Bat Country (Video)
[edit] Music video
The video for this song shows various symbolic images and references to the above-mentioned Thompson book. The song centers around the band performing in a hotel room, surrounded by exotic dancers. There are also cuts to a scene in which the band is driving down a barren highway in a bat-winged convertible, surrounded by a cloud of bats (who are being swatted by The Rev). During the "soft" section, the band appears at a strip club, surrounded by snake-tongued strippers. Also, it's implied that the video is partially a hallucinaton. If you watch closely, the words on M. Shadows shirt appear to change between "Why Disneyland" and "If you have Amsterdam." The shirt actually says "Why Disneyland if you have Amsterdam?" at one point in the song. It changes back afterward. During Synyster Gates' and Zacky Vengeance's guitar solo/duo the bats that fly into the sky are sometimes not there. The regular people sometimes appear to have a disfigured face. During this video's commentary by Avenged Sevenfold on their All Excess DVD the band says that the bats hallucination was actually due to a lack of funds though if they were serious or joking isn't said.
The music video, which was filmed around Las Vegas, still receives considerable airplay on many channels. As Shadows says, the band members live close to Las Vegas. Synyster Gates commented[1] at 2:47, 'You put all of us in the car, and that's basically what you have.'
There is a reference to the video in the music video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock - In one of the cutscenes that follows the player's band on their journey to fame, the band is with their car driving through a wild flock of bats, with the singer trying to fend off the massive cloud of bats with a magazine.
[edit] Chart positions
| Chart (2008) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| U.S. Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks | 2 |
| U.S. Billboard Modern Rock Tracks | 6 |
| U.S. Billboard Hot Ringtones | 40 |
| U.S. Billboard Hot 100 | 60 |
| U.S. Billboard Pop 100 | 62 |
| U.S. Billboard Hot Digital Songs | 64 |
[edit] References
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[edit] External links
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