Avenged Sevenfold are currently celebrating their first trip to the top of the Billboard album chart, as their fifth album Nightmare knocked Eminem's seemingly-untouchable Recovery from its perch in the pole position. It's something of a bittersweet celebration for the band, as they are experiencing this particular victory without drummer Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan, who passed away in December of last year.

But the band feels good about the success of Nightmare, as the album is meant to be a tribute to Sullivan. "We wanted to carry on his legacy," bassist Johnny Christ told MTV News on Wednesday (August 4).

The video for the title track is also a tribute, as it pays homage to Sullivan in a number of different ways.

"The video itself is a tribute," Christ said. "The director, Wayne Isham, has become a very close friend, and he came to us with the idea to do a 'Jacob's Ladder' theme. That was one of Jimmy's favorite movies, one that he talked about a lot. When that idea came up, we thought 'That's perfect.'"

The clip, which is a genuinely frightening trip through a savage sanitarium, also contains a handful of visual tips of the hat to the late Sullivan. "There's the broken drum kit and the tarantula crawling over it, and there's a tarantula crawling over Jimmy's face in the Afterlife video, which we also did with Wayne Isham," Christ said. "The whole idea is us having this scary nightmare happening to us."

The clip, which you can check out below, is a great step forward for a group who have always prided themselves on their visual sense. Is it an early entry for the 2011 VMA for Best Rock Video? It's certainly possible.

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