Annihilator - Triple Threat (2017)

There's a point at which a long-surviving band's live products just sort of blend together, and unfortunately with Annihilator that point arrived for me after the first two, because while Triple Threat's first disc does in fact represent the new Waters/Homma phase of the band, it's got some tunes that have already been staples of the past live albums. The production is passable, although I think the vocals are a bit too loud and they are the worst to appear to any of these live offerings to date. Also, tracks like "Set the World On Fire" that were never all that great to begin with just come across as sterile on the stage here, and the band often sounds a lot simpler than they really are, especially the disparity between the clean guitars and then the ragers when the distortion kicks on. As a live experience, I guess you had to be there, because this falls flat, it sounds too clear and clean and the punch doesn't have any viciousness to it. I think the only part that comes off unfiltered from the studio recordings might be a few of the leads, but they feel squirrely compared to the chunk and bulk of the rhythm guitars, bass and drums.

The track selection does have a few new cuts to it but overall seems inconsistent and not that exciting. On the other side, as much as an acoustic album would never be something I'd ever want Annihilator to produce, they have indeed done so with the second disc of this collection. Tracks are grabbed from all over their collection, and many of them are choices that were quite mediocre to begin with, and sadly in these cases the acoustic representations don't offer much of an improvement. Whether they're getting folksy, ballady or bluesy ("Bad Child") it just seems like such a pet project that Jeff might have been curious about, but I doubt the audience really asked for. Take something like "Stonewall" which was a decent thrash album when it released on Never, Neverland, the riffs do translate over to the acoustics, but the lyrics clearly seem a little out of place. Ironically, the vocals are decent through this, and he's not afraid to flex his pipes a little which he doesn't exactly do on the thrash albums he fronts.

All told, Triple Threat has very little Threat to it other than draining your wallet. Jeff Waters has always seemed like a pretty straight-up guy, tremendous thrash guitar player and I can't blame fans if they wanna hurl some money his way for this, but I think both sides could have been improved, with a better choice of live sets/mix, and then maybe a stronger suite of songs converted into acoustics. This shit is pretty risky and rarely works out, and although there is some novelty for Annihilator not having done something like the second disc before, his acoustic parts always work best as preludes to really epic, heavier thrash tracks...a whole disc of them watered down for the campfire is a failure to launch.

Verdict: Fail [4/10]

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