Annihilator
Feast
UDR Music
2013
Annihilator put’s out yet another album. Hurrah. Jeff Waters is a great guitarist, there’s no denying that, but I am not quite sure what was the last Annihilator album that I REALLY enjoyed. It must have been one of the JC, albums and I was still finding those a bit modernist... from the Dave Padden era, I sort of only like songs. I kept buying the albums, mostly, when they came out as half price offers, just to keep the collection complete, but I consider some of them to be real duds. (i.e. metal is a real piece of shit)
“Deadlock” is a hard hitting, lightning fast, ultra precise riffing number with chainsaw guitar histrionics and manic vocals… an ideal opener, if not only for the dump production. Pretty dry and quite plastic, but then again, I suppose, it’s the way most modern productions are eh?
“No Way Out” could have been a nice fast track without any real highlight or real lows, if it wasn’t for some “pussy” – melodic Nickel-back like vocals during the 3rd minute… WTF?!!
“Smear Campaign” apparently is against the haters –lol– (i.e...reviewers? Haha. Oh for funk’s sake... everyone.s entitled to an opinion dude, at least this one doesn’t as much as other songs do. Hahaha, but seriously – if someone’s getting angry about getting bad reviews, consistently well they might as well might – just might want to go back to the drawing board and rethink if there’s something wrong with their “blueprints”??!? just in case...)
“No Surrender” starts with a 20 sec funky intro and then riffs up, then breaks up, then riffs up, and so on and so forth... interesting... experiment that ends up sounding a bit like FNM on a bad hair day… with an interesting solo…
“Wrapped” nice rhythm tracks. Primal. That’s about it about the song... the rest of it, is like a bad rap.
In “Perfect Angel Eyes” Padden attempts to do a melodic vocal and while he’s not too bad, the track itself being quasi reminiscent of “Phoenix rising”, his range is quite limited, so that keeps him at bay and doesn’t allow him to sing the song to its full potential. Which is kinda sad because it’s such a nice song!
“Demon Code” is a more fitting number with DP, bellowing an evil growl, in truly demonic style… in this satanic speed metal racer… edgy, horny dark, evil... liked it!
In “Fight the World” Waters does some of his most beautiful acoustic playing initially but then reverts to electric and just goes for a shreddathon, and some of the flashiest and sickest shit imaginable… and as you could imagine he’s amazing! The song is extreme thrash that borders on blackened... you know, almost deathly... growly thrash at times…
“One Falls, Two Rise” the last song on the first disc, starts slowly but then gathers steam and rhythmically begins to deal out punishing blows left and right... but it’s not really… well it’s really twisted as it sort of decides to cut off, mid riff – into a half minute outro that finishes it ????? OK that’s quite a prog way to finish a song I suppose…
Mediocre. Has some good ideas. Padden is OK, but, this band always needed some Priestoid, screamer behind the mic, to sign, a full tenor and Padden is NOT. Same as Megadeth, with a Full Tenor, they’d be 10 times the band, but who would announce that, to MEGADAVE and live another day-ve?
There’s also a second CD with re-recorded classics... like “Fun Palace”, “Alison Hell”, “King of the Kill”, “Never, Neverland”, “Set the World on Fire”, “Welcome to Your Death”, “Nozone”, “21”,”Stonewall”, “Ultra Motion”, “Time Bomb”, “Refresh the Demon”, “Word Salad”, “Brain Dance”. But here I’m quite confused… I’m not entirely sure if it’s Padden singing or if it’s Padden and Waters or mostly Waters with a little Padden… or a transposed Padden. You see most of the vocals sound quite “higher pitched” than Padden... on the album, so... if he could sing like that, then why doesn’t he... so I’m guessing it must be Water’s at least on a good portion of the older tunes, which would not really be “news” any way! Pfff! Whatever it might be, it’s a welcome bonus addition and good fun. There are a couple of glaring omissions from a complete best of, but then again – it would probably take a double CD on its own to accommodate that…
“Deadlock” is a hard hitting, lightning fast, ultra precise riffing number with chainsaw guitar histrionics and manic vocals… an ideal opener, if not only for the dump production. Pretty dry and quite plastic, but then again, I suppose, it’s the way most modern productions are eh?
“No Way Out” could have been a nice fast track without any real highlight or real lows, if it wasn’t for some “pussy” – melodic Nickel-back like vocals during the 3rd minute… WTF?!!
“Smear Campaign” apparently is against the haters –lol– (i.e...reviewers? Haha. Oh for funk’s sake... everyone.s entitled to an opinion dude, at least this one doesn’t as much as other songs do. Hahaha, but seriously – if someone’s getting angry about getting bad reviews, consistently well they might as well might – just might want to go back to the drawing board and rethink if there’s something wrong with their “blueprints”??!? just in case...)
“No Surrender” starts with a 20 sec funky intro and then riffs up, then breaks up, then riffs up, and so on and so forth... interesting... experiment that ends up sounding a bit like FNM on a bad hair day… with an interesting solo…
“Wrapped” nice rhythm tracks. Primal. That’s about it about the song... the rest of it, is like a bad rap.
In “Perfect Angel Eyes” Padden attempts to do a melodic vocal and while he’s not too bad, the track itself being quasi reminiscent of “Phoenix rising”, his range is quite limited, so that keeps him at bay and doesn’t allow him to sing the song to its full potential. Which is kinda sad because it’s such a nice song!
“Demon Code” is a more fitting number with DP, bellowing an evil growl, in truly demonic style… in this satanic speed metal racer… edgy, horny dark, evil... liked it!
In “Fight the World” Waters does some of his most beautiful acoustic playing initially but then reverts to electric and just goes for a shreddathon, and some of the flashiest and sickest shit imaginable… and as you could imagine he’s amazing! The song is extreme thrash that borders on blackened... you know, almost deathly... growly thrash at times…
“One Falls, Two Rise” the last song on the first disc, starts slowly but then gathers steam and rhythmically begins to deal out punishing blows left and right... but it’s not really… well it’s really twisted as it sort of decides to cut off, mid riff – into a half minute outro that finishes it ????? OK that’s quite a prog way to finish a song I suppose…
Mediocre. Has some good ideas. Padden is OK, but, this band always needed some Priestoid, screamer behind the mic, to sign, a full tenor and Padden is NOT. Same as Megadeth, with a Full Tenor, they’d be 10 times the band, but who would announce that, to MEGADAVE and live another day-ve?
There’s also a second CD with re-recorded classics... like “Fun Palace”, “Alison Hell”, “King of the Kill”, “Never, Neverland”, “Set the World on Fire”, “Welcome to Your Death”, “Nozone”, “21”,”Stonewall”, “Ultra Motion”, “Time Bomb”, “Refresh the Demon”, “Word Salad”, “Brain Dance”. But here I’m quite confused… I’m not entirely sure if it’s Padden singing or if it’s Padden and Waters or mostly Waters with a little Padden… or a transposed Padden. You see most of the vocals sound quite “higher pitched” than Padden... on the album, so... if he could sing like that, then why doesn’t he... so I’m guessing it must be Water’s at least on a good portion of the older tunes, which would not really be “news” any way! Pfff! Whatever it might be, it’s a welcome bonus addition and good fun. There are a couple of glaring omissions from a complete best of, but then again – it would probably take a double CD on its own to accommodate that…