The band has filmed a music video for "Nightmare". To film the video, they hired the famed video director,
Wayne Isham, who has worked with bands such as
Mötley Crüe,
Bon Jovi and
Metallica. The video depicts lead vocalist
M. Shadows about to undergo surgery, when the surgeons take him out of the room on a
gurney and wheel him through the hallway of the hospital. Shadows then notices the torn-down former drum kit of the band's deceased drummer,
The Rev, when he toured with them to support their record
City of Evil. The surgeons move him through halls and he sees the members of Avenged Sevenfold acting mentally insane, such as rhythm guitarist
Zacky Vengeance convulsing on the floor in a
straitjacket (and later
waltzing with a skeleton), lead guitarist
Synyster Gates continually banging his bloodied forehead against the window of a door, and bassist
Johnny Christ crawling on the ceiling with a skeleton, as well as disturbing images of children playing and soaked in blood. The video shifts between these scenes and scenes of the band performing in a black room with a small amount of background light. Towards the end of the video, M. Shadows begins to fight the gurney, wanting to get off, as they wheel him toward a room being led by two young boys. He cannot get off because he is strapped to it. He is wheeled into a room, where the last drum set The Rev toured with Avenged Sevenfold with is set up with a light behind it, morphed into The Rev's figure. The video does not feature
Mike Portnoy playing drums; this was decided by Portnoy himself as he wanted it to be all about Avenged Sevenfold and seeing as how The Rev wrote most of the drums for the album. Portnoy thought it would be wrong to have himself in the video. The music video is heavily based on the infamous scene from ''
Jacob's Ladder where Jacob Singer, played by Tim Robbins, is being pulled through a hospital on a stretcher. The band used Jacob's Ladder'' as inspiration for the video because they knew it was one of The Rev's favorite movies. Many homages and tributes are shown throughout the video. For instance, The Rev's
City of Evil tour drum kit has
tarantulas crawling on it, just like in the "
Afterlife" video, where a spider crawls across The Rev's face (additionally, while filming the "Afterlife" video, The Rev stated he had
arachnophobia). Another example is during the scene of Zacky Vengeance waltzing with a skeleton. This is also shown in the "Afterlife" video, where he is dancing with his then girlfriend (and later wife). Other smaller references to Avenged Sevenfold's videos are The Priest from "
Seize the Day" and patients faces stretching, like in the "
Bat Country" video. ==Track listing==