Nightmare is the fifth studio album by American heavy metal band Avenged Sevenfold, released on July 23, 2010, through Warner Bros. Records.

It was produced by Mike Elizondo, mixed in New York City by audio engineer Andy Wallace, and mastered by Ted Jensen.

[3] Nightmare was Avenged Sevenfold's first album to be recorded without Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan performing drums due to his death in December 2009.

[3] The rest of the drum tracks were handled by Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy, who also played with the band for all their tours through the end of 2010.

The album debuted at number one in the Billboard 200 in the United States and was certified Gold by the BPI and Platinum by both the RIAA and Music Canada.

I am treating my participation on this album with the utmost respect for Jimmy's memory and am remaining as true as possible to the drum parts that he wrote for the songs and the record he wanted to make.

[...] Although I wish I could stay on board with Avenged Sevenfold in a more permanent capacity; I will need to resume work with Dream Theater to start a new album at some point in 2011.

However, I will be able to join my brothers in Avenged Sevenfold for at least the duration of their touring throughout 2010, and hopefully this will give them the time to continue to heal and get comfortable back on the road.

[13][14]After a couple of months, more notices about the album became available; a short message from Zacky Vengeance was posted on the official Avenged Sevenfold Twitter on April 17, 2010: "Tracking is complete.

"[15] Johnny Christ stated in an interview with Ultimate Guitar about the writing process and subject matter of Nightmare: We definitely had made the decision that it was going to be a concept record.

The eeriest thing about it is there is a song on the album called "Fiction" (a nickname The Rev gave himself) which started out with the title "Death".

The same day, the band also posted a video of the song on their official YouTube channel with animated lyrics, which received over 275,000 views in 24 hours.

The track "Buried Alive" was posted on the band's Facebook page on July 14, but experienced loading issues due to a large number of users trying to access the video, and was briefly taken down.

[32] "Welcome to the Family" was released to YouTube on July 23 with a now-deleted music video featuring gameplay from Call of Duty: Black Ops.

The single's b-sides were "4:00 AM" (an outtake from Nightmare) and a live version of "Seize the Day" from City of Evil, which features The Rev on drums and backing vocals.