Annihilator - Criteria for a Black Widow (1999)

Even though Criteria for a Black Widow was released only two years after the laughable Remains, it bore all the hallmarks of a band coming to its senses, a 'comeback' album not over any major gulf of time, but over a gulf in common sense. If you've heard Jeff's commentary tracks for these albums, he'll tell you himself that he was going through some rough times and that Black Widow was an attempt to get back to what mattered, to a full band where he didn't have to perform all the vocals and instruments himself, and back to a style that put Annihilator into the ears of rabid thrash bands in the first place. And he went to great lengths to that effect, reuniting with Rampage and Ray Hartmann to hopefully rekindle the magic from Alice in Hell. Even the cover, though cheesy, seems like a return to referencing the 'Alice' character in some capacity, and there are self-referential song titles here like "Back to the Palace" or the sequel song "Schizos (Are Never Alone) Part III". With all these pieces in place, did Criteria for a Black Widow restore the faith after a near-decade of dysfunction? Was it enough?

Well it damn near tries to be. Now let me qualify that I don't think bands need to try and always ape themselves to forge a comeback, but rather to take where they were at on those seminal works and then ask what should have come next if the decision making had been better. Criteria is a manic thrash metal album which drops most of the nonsense like the hard rock-isms of the earlier 90s, or the industrial weirdness of remains. There might be a bit of Pantera groove remaining, but its largely unobtrusive, and at least seems to fit the songs where it appears. Where Black Widow falls short is that it does little more than just get the band back to a respectable level. 'We get it guys, and we're back!' Only it lacks the nuance and inventiveness that the band had been on the precipice of when they released their debut album. There's nothing forward here, just maintenance, and sadly a few of the tracks and parts slack behind the rest to create an uneven experience.

It works best when the band are channeling the faster, nastier thrash metal which reminds me of anything from their own earliest works, to a bit of Holy Terror, or Dark Angel, or the like. Cuts like "Back to the Palace" and "Nothing Left" are fairly relentless, with Jeff's leads flailing around and some gnarly vocals that make it feel like Randy Rampage never skipped a beat. A few of the tracks that utilized catchier choruses or melodies ("Loving the Sinner") are also pretty competent, at the very least devastating what the band had been putting out in the fateful 1993-1997 period, but there are a few vocal sections that miss the mark, a few boring riffs here or there, terrible lyrics, and compositions that seem as if they needed a little more time gestating before being committed to disc. For a home recording, it sounds alright, but again it doesn't all feel terribly consistent. The entire time I was listening through this album, I felt like this was a 'warmup' to a truly greater return to form that might manifest if the same lineup could just stay in place. 

There was also a bit of buzz around this, more excitement than I had remembered in years surrounding the band, so when I got the promo in the mail (back when I did my old paper zine), I was just happy that Jeff had touched base with himself, with what Annihilator was supposed to be. To that effect, Criteria for a Black Widow is an important transition or de-transition, one that would stave off a lot of foolishness for the group's still-extensive future to follow. Sure, they might fuck up again, but not to the level that they had sunk throughout the 90s. And with luck, since a lot of the traditional metal forms would start to re-emerge from the murk in the new millennium, there'd be an audience again with which to share this newfound lease on the steel. As for the album itself? Forgettable, but not offensively so.

Verdict: Indifference [6.25/10]

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