Annihilator
Feast

Annihilator, the world's biggest "one man band" in the thrash genre has for ten years been a duo and this is the fifth album they do together. It is a nine track long piece of nearly 50 minutes of music that also comes with a bonus disc with 15 classic Annihilator tracks covering about 70 minutes of Annihilator discography. From 'Alice In Hell' to 'Carnival Diablos' but newly recorded with the current line-up since the second part of this duo didn't feature on these albums. I've recieved the whole package, but I will focus most on the new songs, although I get to some about the remakes later on too.

Although this is the band's fifth album as a duo, it's also the fourteenth studio album by Annihilator. Jeff Waters started the band once upon a time and is the sole member and has takn the name to this point, one of Canada's most successful hard rock bands. The sad fact though is that, as with most other thrash bands, it's mostly just the oldest albums that people remember. The ones released in the 80's when thrash genre was at its peak. Nevertheless Waters says that the band's fans are largely younger than 25 (more than 50%, he claims) and that's why we get 15 extra tracks on 'Feast', if we want them.

Anyway, enough about that - what do we get this 'Feast'? For those of you who heard Annihilator earlier, the easiest way to describe the album would be to say that it does not differ too radically from the way it's sounded before. For those who hasn't heard the band we can describe it as a cavalcade of pretty neutral thrash metal. As with most other thrash 'Feast' is an orgy of fast drums and fast guitars and an angry, almost gurgling sound for vocals. Annihilator has never really belonged to the trashies thrash bands, the band was started in the middle of thrash metal's glory days but it took until 1989 before they released their debut, and at that time the thrash genre was transferring out of its rawest, dirtiest sound in favor of a better sound production and slightly more varied style. And somehow it feels like it's where Annihilator has stayed. It's a bit more accessible than the music the genre's true pioneers played but it's still angry, shouty and dirty.

Opening Deadlock feels like a song in the classic 80's thrash-vein while the subsequent No Way Out and Smear Campaign is more true to the sound that's characteristic for the band, which is a deeper form of thrash than the opening track - not as fast and the vocals does not feel quite as wasp-like, even if they still have that classic thrash sound over itself. No Surrender feels more like a modern thrash song and if you don't know what that means, many new thrash band use a much heavier base sound and not at the same high tempo.

After lowering the tempo ever since the opening track the band pace up a bit with the fifth track, although the heaviness is virtually blown away on this one and replaced with a more stoner-like sound (except in the choruses). Following Wrapped we get something that really isn't thrash metal whatsoever in Perfect Angel Eyes, which is played with semi-acoustic guitars and sung with clear vocals ... and it's a ballad! Seriously, a ballad?! Yes, but it shouldn't be that surprisingly, given that the band has been doing a few songs in this fashion ever since 'All For You' and Dave Paddens came into the band. Perfect Angel Eyes is quite nice, but it's pretty clear that this band is a bit fishy out of water making songs like these and in my opinion they succeeded best when they did 'All For You'. However, we get another song in this fashion before the album is over and I think that one is much better but we will return to it when we get there.

Demon Code is a heavy, proper thrash song again but in more of a German way. It's not the typical Bay Area speed or American dirtiness but more of a modern northern European style. It's also pretty long with almost 6 1/ 2 minutes of bashing. Fight The World comes as the penultimate track on 'Feast' and it takes us back to the acoustic sound again in the opening part of the track. But the nearly seven minutes long song soon takes us back to how it sounded in the first track of the album: genre typical thrashing thrash in its truest dressing. The vocals might be a bit slow to really feel at suiting with the otherwise quite thrashy song but I can imagine that this is a song that opens up a hole in the audience at live shows and then gets full of testosterone charged young men wrestling - as it has tends to be when bands like Annihilator goes on stage. After the closing phase of Fight The World comes the longest track of of them all to complete the trio of the longest songs on this album, but firstthe song gives us some heavy metal guitar passages in its final stage. Anyway, One Falls, Two Rise begins like Fight The World with a tranquil and reminiscent sound at first, not too different from Perfect Angel Eyes with clear vocals and ballad feel. On this occasion though I think it sounds really good and it's actually a shame that they return to their thrash sound after nearly two and a half minutes. After around four minutes of thrash 'n' roll they finally return to how it sounded in the beginning and gives a beautiful one and a half minute ending to both the song and the album.

Qualitatively, I think the album holds together well. It definitely belongs to the band's more interesting releases so far and it's really nice to hear this big variation on a thrash album since they usually tend to be pretty much keep their heads down and charge through with the same sound all the way through, but on the other hand Annihilator has never really sounded like that.

The bonus CD with all the old classic songs of this band as remakes feels like one of those discs that does not really destroy anything regardless if it's good or bad. It's a bit like when some bands do a remake of an old album and release the old version as a bonus, or if you make a best-of and release one of the old demos as bonus. It's a fun thing to have and it can be worth a few quid extra against normal price even if you would never play it. Personally I think that the bonus disc is pretty good. It has better sound quality than the originals, better mix and higher quality of recording all the way through. Should you be completely possessed by the old songs you might not like how they "killed" the originals here but I find it very difficult to see how a fan of this band would think that they have done that. Alison Hell, Never Neverland, Set The World On Fire and so on are definitely comparable to their originals and in many cases even better. In fact I don't think they butcher any of the songs they've rerecorded, the only thing I possibly have to complain about is the somewhat frightful length of the bonus disc. I find it very difficult to see how many people would choose to sit through this whole 71 minutes long bonus CD but then again it is a bonus disc... so it's no big deal .

All in all I think this is a really good quality product and for everyone that really love this band I'm certain you'd be more than satisfied would you invest in two hours of Annihilator "feasting". For those of you who may not be completely sold it might be enough with the first 50 minutes, but apart from the length of the bonus disc, I think that is more or less equal in quality. 'Feast' is definitely worth to be checked out, it is a rich solid thrash album in almost every way.

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