"Beast and the Harlot" is a song by Avenged Sevenfold, the song was released as a single taken from their third album City of Evil. The song peaked at #19 on the U.S. Mainstream Rock chart, #47 on the UK Singles Chart., and #1 on the UK Rock Chart on 12 March 2006.

The actual song is about the fall of Babylon, The Great from the Book of Revelation (particularly chapter seventeen), from which many quotes are taken, such as "Seven headed beast, ten horns raise from his head", "hatred strips her and leaves her naked", and other references. The Harlot referred to in the song is Great Babylon, quoted in the song, "Fallen now is Babylon The Great." On Avenged Sevenfold's All Excess DVD, Tony Petrossian, who directed the video, says that M. Shadows' lyrics for this song about the fall of Babylon is comparing Babylon to Hollywood, showing many Hollywood clichés such as the young, innocent boys being corrupted and losing their souls. In the music video the Harlot was played by actress Elizabeth Melendez.

The song is one of the first songs recorded with singer M. Shadows' different vocal style avoiding unclean vocals as well as a more hard rock sound as opposed to their previous work, with heavy and fast riffs and a relatively normal song structure (with the exception of the guitar solo, which comes after the first chorus rather than the second, atypical of a three verse song).

The song's rapid main riff was voted as the 14th greatest riff ever by the guitar magazine Total Guitar in March 2007. Total Guitar wrote: "The main riff to Beast and the Harlot is a great piece of dropped-D riffing with Zacky and Synyster cleverly placing the second part of the riff across the beat to create an aggressive syncopated feel, once again avoiding all the usual metal clichés."

...
Wikipedia