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By RYAN MAVITY
Here is the most appropriate album title of the year. Metal by Annihilator is an anthology of different metal genres, filtered through a unique brand of guitar rawk. It’s an album that should have the makers of the Guitar Hero series salivating, with its blistering leads by band maestro Jeff Waters.
The key track on Metal is “Army of One.” Here, frontman Dave Padden alternates between a hard-edged vocal style with what can best be described as pseudo-raps. Don’t let that scare you because the lyrics pay homage to the uniting power of metal, name-checking metal titans such as Slayer, Metallica and Exodus. Many of the songs have the kind of shout-along choruses made famous by Anthrax. In fact, if you were to sum up a band that Annihilator sounds a little like, it would be John Bush-era Anthrax, particularly on “Downright Dominate.” There’s also a little bit of social commentary in “Smothered” and a cool ass opening riff on “Operation Annihilation” that echoes Pantera’s classic “Walk.” The album features a slew of special guests, including Arch Enemy’s Angela Gossow (who sings on “Couple Suicide”), Corey Beaulieu of Trivium, Jesper Stromblad of In Flames and William Adler of Lamb of God.
Despite the all-star roster, the star of the show is Waters. His guitar playing on this album is something to behold. Witness the crazy fretwork he pulls off in the bridge of “Operation Annihilation.” Drummer Mike Mangini also stands out, particularly on the death metal intro and chorus to “Haunted.” “Kicked,” the song with Beaulieu, shows that Annihilator can adopt styles as well, as the song is reminiscent of Trivium’s work, but with Annihilator’s signature thrash/power metal stamp on it. Same with the power groove style of “Detonation,” the beginning of which shows Mangini can stand up with the black metal drummers in terms of furious double kick drums.
The whole album is chock full of awesome musicianship, but the songs are also tight and always kicking ass. Metal is one of those albums where you don’t notice that any of the tracks are over five minutes long and that is a good thing. Metal is heavy music done the way it should be.
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