Annihilator - Schizo Deluxe (2005)

With a silly intro urging us to 'Unleash the Beast' and an opening track called "Maximum Satan", you really have to kick some ass or crank up the laughs to get me hooked, and Schizo Deluxe fails to do either of them. This is the second Annihilator full-length of the Dave Padden era, and expectations were quite low after All For You, and thought it does turn up the dials in terms of producing a then-modern, generic thrash metal record with the correct DNA, it's not really a huge leap in quality forward over its predecessor. Again, you have the meathead opener, a little more intense than off the last album, but just not offering the sorts of riffs or structure that we enjoyed on the first two. "Drive" and "Warbird" are pretty much pure Metallica worship, Master of Puppets era, and while they aren't all that bad, they once again gives me the impression that Padden just sort of grabs his style from a bunch of other popular forerunners of the metal music scene and never can really develop a personality of his own.

The production is about the same as on the prior album, but the material is denser and faster so it does come off slightly more unhinged and therefore superior, and automatically more entertaining just because the sheer velocity will hold your attention better. The drummer here, Tony Chappelle, is given more to do than Mike Mangini on All For You, and so he metes out a muscular if mechanistic performance which only comes up slacking if you're expecting any surprises. Jeff Waters is obviously still an amazing guitarist, as tracks like "Invite It" amply exhibit, and the song quality is once again commensurate with how crazy and technical his riffing becomes. Tunes like "Maximum Satan" and "Like Father, Like Gun" just can't hang with the blazing speed of some of their neighbors, and in the case of the latter you have to wade through a dumb big mid-paced thrash riff and groove before you even get to a half-decent melodic chorus which reminds me of "Steppin' Stone" by the Monkees.

It's almost like Annihilator didn't get the memo that the groove/thrash devolution of the 90s was no longer really cool, and so Schizo Deluxe seems more for fans of Machine Head, Pantera and later Metallica and not so much for those seeking a restoration to the excellence of Alice in Hell. It's far from the Canadians' worst offering, but it just seems like a soulless and unnecessary modern evolution of the sound that I can file away with so many other contemporary thrash albums from the 'Oughts that understood the actual construction, but lack the personality of all the best classic thrash albums. Yes, there are at least a dozen great guitar lines here, almost all the good stuff is just Waters himself, but overall it doesn't leave much of an impression for better or worse, just sorts of sits there in the middle of a turbulent catalog, listing to the right and left as we wait to hear what the storm will bring next.

Verdict: Indifference [5.75/10]

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