Annihilator - Carnival Diablos (2001)

As disheartening as it was to see Randy Rampage separated from the band again, and while they were on a minor uptick at that, all fears were quelled when it was announced that Joe Comeau, of Master Control fame with Liege Lord, and having recently performed guitar with Overkill for several albums over several years, would be assuming the vocal duties along with Jeff Waters and Ray Hartmann. And for the first few tracks of Carnival Diablos, I was absolutely blown away by the result. THIS was the modern thrash the band had needing for years, taking Waters' riffing strengths into a new millennium while honoring their better early material. Clinical, aggressive, somewhat technical but never dizzying or inaccessible, chops flying all over the fucking place, where have you been Annihilator?

Add to this Joe's performance, which is just awesome. It's not so much the pure USPM screaming of his Liege Lord performance, but a sleeker take on it, with some vicious mid-range and then only the higher pitches when they are needed. On tunes like "Denied" and "Battered" he sounds exceptional, putting the band into that range of power/thrash hybrids like Artillery, Agent Steel or Paradox, but even when the band slows down for a groovier/90s rhythm, he still elevates the material beneath him. The problem is that Waters just can't stop himself from fucking around, and Carnival Diablos once again decides to diverge in styles to include some almost pure hard rock pieces that totally betray the potential this album started off with. "Shallow Grave" sounds like an attempt at an AC/DC or early Accept track, and that tune is also sandwiched by some slower foot-stompers which slow the pace down without really offering much in return. "Time Bomb" at least has a little power and a decent lick or two, but the title track sounds to me like Stone Temple Pilots with Joe Comeau.

Things take a while to improve, because there some additional weaker tunes wedged onto the latter half of the disc, like the proggy acoustic instrumental "Liquid Oval" that never quite delivers on its potential, but there some decent aggressors like "Epic of War" and "Hunter Killer" which I feel like could have been merged with the first few tunes to create a rager of an EP. And then, for whatever fucking reason, Jeff throws a joke country/prog(?!) song on the end of the album, "Chicken and Corn", that makes "Kraf Dinner" less embarrassing by comparison. At this point I felt like I had entered the Twilight Zone, because Carnival Diablos had all it took to be THAT 'comeback album', and just squandered its good footing, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Don't get me wrong, the combination of Comeau and Waters is explosive on a lot of this material, but there are just a few too many dumb decisions to allow this to go the distance. When it works, its got some of the better Annihilator material of the 21st century. Too bad then that the author was committed to making sure it doesn't.

Verdict: Indifference [6.75/10]

https://www.annihilatormetal.com/

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]

https://www.annihilatormetal.com/

Annihilator - Remains (1997)

Somewhere along the line, Jeff Waters started listening to a lot of White Zombie and Ministry, probably some of Prong's transformative works during this same period, and thus Remains was born, an album that is inarguably the most 'experimental' in Annihilator's catalogue. There are still a number of straight-up thrash tracks, which makes the album even more confusing, but the whole thing is a fucking mess that shouldn't have ever seen the light of day, even if Jeff had stuck with just one of the particular sounds he was exploring. I can't tell what's worse, the totally bland cover image or the music itself, which seems to utterly fail to grab onto a proper hook or chorus no matter which avenue of heavy music it is trying to explore, all of which feel pretty derivative, just not from the source they should have been...Annihilator's impressive debut years.

"Dead Wrong" sounds like "Walk" from Pantera, only mixed slightly more for rivet-heads with the vocal filter. "Sexecution" sounds like a bad Rob Zombie from the Great White North, only Rob would have tossed this track off his first few forthcoming solo albums for how unforgivably bland it is. He can't even stick to the same industrial metal sound, "No Love" goes a bit more like a Goth-y Ministry, and the album gets even WEIRDER than this..."Wind" sounds like a slightly more dissonant version of Rush, "Bastiage" sounds like some 80s synth music from a big budget 80s cop flick only with some chugging layered in. Keep in mind that throughout this, Waters occasionally swings back into thrash mode for tunes like "Tricks and Traps", and Remains winds up totally disoriented and disorienting and making you question why any record label executive in his/her right mind would approve this for release other than a test copy that would be immediately discarded to the nearest wastebasket.

If Jeff had stuck to one experiment and created something more compelling and cohesive, I would have happily forgiven the total sea change and perhaps even enjoyed it, but this is an album that lives up to its title as the corpsified 'Remains' of a once-promising metal band that lost its way completely in an age of rapidly evolving trends. And I don't say these things because I hate any of these other genres...I was and 'remain' a huge fan of industrial metal today, including most of what Jeff was probably inspired by, but this album simply doesn't do any of that any justice, and certainly not Annihilator. Production is all over the place, you can count the catchy riffs in the thrash songs on two fingers, and even the track list isn't laid out in any way where these broad strokes can complement one another. It would turn out to be a short-lived deviation, to be fair, but coming off what was already a pretty miserable stretch of albums with no hope in sight, I'm beyond shocked that the Canadian survived this one.

Verdict: Epic Fail [2/10]

https://www.annihilatormetal.com/

Annihilator - In Command (Live 1989-1990) (1996)

There's a strange contradiction in having the cover of this first official Annihilator be graced with a grown-up, 'sexy' version of the Alice in Hell character that looks like she belongs in a Whitesnake video, and then the fact that the performances from the album are taken from back when the Canadians were actually a pretty good band, and Alice was a younger person. Another remnant of the Roadrunner contract, In Command wants the potential fanbase to know loud and clear that this is material taken from the band's prime, thus the years are placed glaringly in the title itself, and that's a good thing, because we are treated with the band's best music to date and nothing from the lengthy slack-off period which the band was still smack in the middle of.

It's also to be noted that this record is split between the Randy Rampage and Coburn Pharr eras, but both are represented rather well with about a half dozen tracks or so from their respective albums. The first volley of tunes with Randy are the best in that they're much more aggressive, and his voice sounds nasty while the guitars sound pretty damn good. Rhythms are right up front, but leads cut through, the bass is reasonably audible and the drumming is pretty intense throughout, with Hartann meting out even more energy than he gave us on record. All the good tracks are represented, whether you're into "Word Salad" or "Road to Ruin". I think Pharr has a rougher time in the live setting, his voice gets a little wild and weird on some of his fronted tracks, but at the same time it's a little more unpredictable up against the studio versions, and whatever reverb levels and instruments are set to here feels more resonant and atmospheric while the first half of the album is way more straight-to-the-face.

You will also get to hear Coburn singing "Alison Hell", with mixed results, but this is arguably the best sounding track instrumentally on the latter half of the recording. It's closed out with a cover of AC/DC's "Live Wire" performed with some genuine energy and confidence, capping off what is in my opinion a pretty passable live effort. I got more out of listening through this than the last three studio albums the band had released, it doesn't sound too professionally polished so you get a good audience vibe, and a clear indicator of the potential and power this band had on a starving thrash audience at the close of the 80s. Granted, much of that audience would be drowned out by all the backwards baseball caps and plaid shirts in the following decade, and Annihilator would have succeeded much more if they had appeared in, say, 1986 with their debut, but in current times all this stuff has gotten pretty popular again and if you're in the mood for a live record in this genre that got little attention, this is alright.

Verdict: Indifference [6.75/10]

https://www.annihilatormetal.com/

Annihilator - Refresh the Demon (1996)

Don't tease with a cover that reminds me of Abominog, bro, one of my favorite (if cheesy) Uriah Heep albums of the 80s and beyond. If I were to guess by the title, Refresh the Demon, I would surmise that this record might be Annihilator's attempt at 'righting the ship' from its previous two discs, and I can say with fairness that is exactly what happens here...to an extent. This one definitely feels like a record written for its time period but keeping its roots primarily in the thrash that put Jeff Waters on the map to begin with. If a lot of the simpler, groovier and chugging rhythms tend to remind me of things Dimebag Darrell was writing on records like Cowboys from Hell, so be it, but at least the compositions retain some degree of Annihilator's past, the "Alison Hell" squeals in "A Man Called Nothing" being one of many examples).

That's not to say Refresh the Demon is good, in fact it's quite mediocre at its best, but there is a settling in and structure to how this one is composed which seem consistent. Waters has settled into his vocal duties much more on this, not that they are outstanding by any measure, but he rarely goes too over the top when he's emoting certain cheesy lyrics. There are a number of those Dave Mustaine snarled lines, to be sure, but the music in tracks like "Ultraparanoia" and "A Man Called Nothing" at least keeps you distracted enough not to care too much about such shortcomings. There's definitely a bit of trad hard rock and heavy metal inspiration to pieces like "City of Ice" and "Anything for Money", but they're blended in with enough thrashing finesse that they don't do anything groan-inducing like half of King of the Kill was. It only goes too far on something like "Hunger", with a bluesy hard rock shuffle that again reminds me of Nuno's writing in Extreme, but even this isn't a terrible tune in context. "Innocent Eyes" is a shitty, forgettable ballad and the worst song here, no surprise that one was pushed off to the end but should have been pushed a little further...into the nearest river.

The leads are generally well written and provide most of the album's exciting moments, although they're not terribly interesting if isolated from the rest of the tracks. Randy Black performs the drumming adequately, the capable veteran who replaced Mike Mangini on the prior album, and the bass is alright but never really a standout through the track list. Production is punchy and accessible, maybe even continuing the standard set by the prior album as feeling a little too glossy to really do the heavier tracks justice, but those seeking something 'current' for the mid-90s probably wouldn't have minded this so much. Refresh the Demon is nothing impressive by any means, and if not for covering this whole discography I wouldn't have revisited it, but if someone were playing this in the car I would grin and bear it, while King of the Kill would have us pulling over so I can catch an Uber. Bland but passable 90s thrash that isn't aware that for at least the next decade, the style of all those bands in Metallica's wake was just 'over', and in this case not merely for being passé, but for just not being very good.

Verdict: Indifference [5.5/10]

https://www.annihilatormetal.com/

Annihilator - Bag of Tricks (1994)

The cover artwork for Bag of Tricks might actually be a little cooler than the two full-length albums before it, but that's nothing to get excited about, as this is merely an early fan-package probably released to fill out some contractual agreement with Roadrunner. I believe Annihilator had at this point moved over to Music for Nations for new studio material, so this feels like a loose collection of odds and ends that suffers a bit from the inconsistency of its contents. At the very least, though, we would assume we could be spared from the lamentable direction the band proper had taken through its mid-90s material, and Bag of Tricks was sticking to the band's demos and debut album and little else. To that end, this was probably worth tracking down if only for the diehards.

By far the best content here are the unreleased tracks "Back to the Crypt" and "Gallery" which had Randy Rampage on vocals and were recorded as demos for Never, Neverland while he was still in the lineup, but for whatever dumb reason never manifest on the actual album. These aren't the catchiest songs the group had written, but they definitely remind me of tunes like "Wicked Mystic" or "Burns Like a Buzzsaw Blade" and have some of that early nastiness present. Riff-wise, they aren't super memorable, but the leads are good and the energy is fiendish and vibrant as the band was when they hit the studio for the debut, and in fact these tunes belong more with that than the sophomore. The "Alison Hell" remastered track is worthless to me, why bother messing with something that was already excellent, and it doesn't offer enough of a notable difference for me to care. The demo cuts for Set the World on Fire are also quite uninteresting, and the new track from that era, "Fantastic Things", feels like an acoustic AOR track that would have only brought that album down even more, though it of itself isn't entirely terrible.

The old demo at the end of the compilation is pretty neat because you're hearing tunes like "Alison Hell" and "Phantasmagoria" with even more savage, extreme vocals from Jeff Waters which were quite hilarious but also kind of awesome at the same time. And the EP's worth of live tracks are actually recorded decently enough for the 80s or early 90s and make "Human Insecticide" and "W.T.Y.D." shien in the live setting. So ultimately, this could better be titled Mixed Bag of Tricks, but at least half of the content shouldn't have been tossed into the bin, and as a fan of those first two albums I thought it was neat to hear those unreleased tracks and confirmation of the band's skill in the live setting. At the same time, a little bit of a painful reminder of the band's then-present decline in quality.

Verdict: Indifference [5.25/10]

https://www.annihilatormetal.com/

Annihilator - King of the Kill (1994)

King of the Kill seems to get a little bit of a break as a pivot back to form or a redemption from the miserable Set the World on Fire, but I find such to be a bit of critical doggerel, because this album is arguably even worse an offender than its predecessor, the one difference being that Jeff Waters has taken over the vocal duties himself. His style is largely comparable to Aaron Randall, don't get me wrong, with a little Randy Rampage in there since he knows what the crowd probably wants, but the delivery is thankfully superior to the third album and at least shows us all that he is capable of expressing these musical ideas into lyrics himself, without needing some third party to flop about like a fish drowning in air. Alas, the musical content of King of the Kill is so uneven and grasping at straws that there is just no saving it from sodden mediocrity, and it ends up sucking even worse.

1994. Thrash is dead. Or it's become Far Beyond Driven. Jeff Waters is still chipping away at the dream, but instead of taking what the band did best on Alice in Hell and Never, Neverland, he's alternating those thrash licks, which he can still play quite well, with an increasing number of acoustics, ballad-like songs which are instantly forgettable, dumb lyrics, lazy song titles, and detritus that often feels like he had been writing for another, more commercial rock band and then shoved that onto an Annihilator disc to stuff out some recording contract. How do you sign this band on the strength of prior releases, get submitted this shit and then actually pay money to send it to factory? For me to even take King of the Kill remotely seriously I would need to clip off at least 8-8 lame tracks like the goofy "Bad Child", "In the Blood", or "Speed" which feels like Jeff is channeling his inner Nuno Bettencourt except it's not actually catchy like Extreme was in their prime. There are also a number of thrash riffs here which sound like he was even dumbing that particular style down to a Black Album level, but again, not nearly as good as coming up with songs as the Bay Area boys were in that era.

The album is possibly the most polished in terms of production to what they had done at the time, but that only adds to its commercial crappiness, as it lacks that glorious mix of crisp mix and songcraft as they possessed in the 1989-1990 period. The bass actually sounds pretty loud and well performed, but it's all for naught. The guitars, while obviously quite competent, are a real letdown: the thrash riffs are uniformly unmemorable, the acoustics don't enchant like "Crystal Anne" once did, and the hard rock theatrics are lamentable. If I condensed this record down to two tracks, let's say "King of the Kill" itself and something like "21", and dressed those up with better ideas, then you might have a tolerable single's worth of material, but the rest of this is uninspired, lazy dreck that seems as if a weak Jett Waters solo album that was rebranded as Annihilator because, you know, branding. Don't get me wrong; I admire Waters' ability to boldly go forth and continue after a disaster such as this, but the stain remains.

Verdict: Fail [3.5/10]

https://www.annihilatormetal.com/

Annihilator - Set the World on Fire (1993)

As steep of a dive as Set the World on Fire takes from the first two Annihilator albums, I think it's important to evaluate the world that this was being released into. Thrash metal as we knew it had really dried up, most of its royalty either disbanding or altering their sound to fit into a 90s landscape that was going Grunge, hip hop, Pantera groove metal or ducking off into more extreme territories, and to give the Canadians some credit, they always maintained at least some of the thrash and speed metal of their core sound. For whatever brief flights of adaptation Jeff Waters might take his band on, he's always been the riff-first sort of guy who is an essential anchor for the style, and Set the World on Fire is still foremost a thrash metal effort. But the writing is on the wall here in many ways...

First, the cool artwork from the first two records has been replaced by a photographic eyesore which looks like a failed attempt at mimicking Dark Angel's 3rd and 4th records. Sure, the grown up Alice has some thematic consistency with Alice in Hell and Never, Neverland, but it just doesn't present itself well, and the weird light filtering effect in the background make it look like someone scratched up the cover. This was the last Annihilator album I picked up a physical copy for, and that was only when I found a dirt cheap cassette in Boston for $3, I had already listened to the album at a friend's house and found it wanting, and I doubt I listened to that tape more than once or twice. The band was on its third singer in as many albums, Aaron Randall, and while I can't tell you that his voice is technically bad, and it made some sense after the style of the first two singers, he's got even cheesier emotes when he's barking out a lot of these lyrics, and it almost sounds like some hard rock transplant from a Skid Row or Badlands cover band crossing over into thrash metal. It can get awkward, to say the least.

Worse than either of these things, though, the songwriting had really slacked off here, as for every half decent track full of Waters' thrash riffs, you've got that 90s poisoning, sometimes in small places like the chorus of "Bats in the Belfry", others more blatant like "Snake in the Grass", which starts out like a shitty hair metal ballad and then goes for a groovy hard rock/metal like Jackyl! And then, I shit you not, this is followed up with "Phoenix Rising", a better song perhaps, but another ballad that sounds like they're trying to make a "November Rain". Cuts like "Set the World on Fire", "Knight Jumps Queen", the and the titular "Set the World on Fire" might possess a few dumb groove/thrash riffs, and parts of "Brain Dance" sound like it might have fit on Alice in Hell, but even even then Annihilator manages to cock it all up with Randall's super cheesy vocal lines and lyrics that are arguably even worse.

If I legit took all the better moments from this album, kicked out the vocalist, brought back Randy Rampage and whittled it all down to a 2-3 track EP, Set the World on Fire might have been a worthwhile follow-up to Never, Neverland, but it's just so bloated with goofy ideas and weaksauce attempts to 'fit in'...I mean listen to the end of "Brain Dance" when the vocals turn into a circus with the whole 'frying pan into the fire' cliche, total dumpster fire that ruins the few good ideas in that track. The bottom line, is that whenever Annihilator dips its toes onto the beach of 90s lameness from the security of the thrashing ocean behind it, the band pretty much sucks. And I don't know that Waters got the memo in time, because this album marks a decades-long descent into mediocrity, so deep into the shadow of that awesome potential of the debut that they were no longer visible.

Verdict: Fail [4.25/10]

https://www.annihilatormetal.com/

Annihilator - Never, Neverland (1990)

Never, Neverland is simultaneously the definition of the dependable sophomore album and the last time I can really remember enjoying any of Annihilator's output to the point that it was a staple in my monthly listening in High School. This would have been the sort of album I kept in regular rotation on the Walkman as I was delivering newspapers to the neighbors, packed with good riffs and songs capable of delivering hooks and chorus parts that made me bang my head more than smirk. There was already the sense that this effort was more 'nuts & bolts' than its predecessor Alice in Hell, and it doesn't quite reach the same lofty heights, but it is a veritable riff-fest for Jeff Waters and was one I could listen to without skipping ALMOST anything (more on that later), if only because that guitar is just so good throughout most of the 44 minute runtime.

On the other hand, it's already showing the first chinks in the Canadians' armor, as the vocalist Randy Rampage from the debut has already been replaced by Coburn Pharr, an 80s hopeful that had a little experience with Prisoner's Rip It Up and Omen's divisive fourth full-length Escape to Nowhere (yeah, the one with the sexy cover but the WTF? music if you'd listened to their earlier output). Pharr has a fairly distinct voice that makes me regret he wasn't around for more records. It's a bit smoky and has its best bite in the mid-range, making it a better fit for thrash than whatever his previous band was attempting, but he can also hit a few higher screams when needed. In fact, his presence here reminds me of when Steve Grimmett was recruited to Onslaught and also surprised me with how well his timbre adapted to the harder hitting music, still keeping that blue collar thrash appeal without going too far over the top. When Pharr does bark out a few goofier lines, trying to sound more maniacal or menacing in tracks like "The Fun Palace", it comes off a bit corny, but in general he delivers, if not at the same level of wild charisma as his predecessor.

There's also a tune here which might have looked good on paper, but in practice has not endured the test of time, and that would be "Kraf Dinner". Look, I eat it, I love it, many of us probably love it, but the lyrics are fucking awful and Coburn sounds extremely silly singing them, and it's a gut punch to an otherwise seamless solid thrashing despite the fact that it's actual music is passable speed metal with a bit of a bluesy blitz to it. 'Macaroni maniac/a cheddar cheese heart attack'? I mean I'm sure this seemed genuinely funny for the guys at the time, many starving metal bands have thrived off the mass-produced pasta, but it just seems ridiculous to me 30+ years later. At least they weren't shoehorning a funk track onto the end and telling me 'Don't just be a metal dude' like some of their thrashing peers from Arizona. If this were removed from the track list, though, I think Never, Neverland would be a more potent, consistent experience.

And speaking of that, what this record DOES have in common with the debut is the dependable drumming of Ray Hartmann and then Jeff Waters flying all over the place with a myriad of tasty riffs and even tastier leads. Even some of the later buried tracks like "Phantasmagoria" have noodly earworms lying in wait to ambush you, and tunes like the opener "The Fun Palace" nearly measure up to "Alison Hell" with some killer melodies and structure. The bass is pretty decent but seems to just hover in the background of the rhythm guitar more often throughout this one, where I remember digging the lines a lot more on the debut, but it hardly distracts me when I'm listening through this one. Glen Robinson's production is pretty spot-on, clean and snappy but still vital and energetic in how it captures the unhinged talents of the band's superstar talent. Never, Neverland is pretty damn fun to revisit, "Kraf Dinner" aside, perhaps even more than when I used to listen to it back in the Age of Acne. If I were to introduce their sound to someone, it was always "Alison Hell" first, but ultimately, this wasn't much of a disappointment when I bought it on release day, and it still holds its own.

Verdict: Win [8/10] (Colors now decay)

https://www.annihilatormetal.com/

Annihilator - Alice in Hell (1989)

It's never my intention to 'prematurely' shit all over a band when I'm revisiting their discography with somewhat fresh ears, since the goal is ultimately to give some second chances, maybe be surprised by a few records that I gave short shrift or overlooked. However, by my own recollection of the teenage thrashing 80s, Canada's Annihilator must have been one of the biggest premature ejaculations in all of the metal scene, shooting its wad loudly and proudly early on, and then entering a long refractory period through which there have only been brief periods of newfound potential and hopeful tumescence. It's a shame, because Alice in Hell was a pretty huge seller after its release, and the band became a top-second tier commodity among nearly ever metal fan I knew. Even those whose sphere of interest fell only into the more mainstream 'big four' of thrash, or arena staples like Priest, Maiden, and Ozzy, had seen the video or picked up this record. Certainly Jeff Waters and crew were on the precipice of major success...

With a slick, dexterous debut like this one, it's not difficult to understand why. While not every song was written on an equally memorable plane, the highlights tend to outnumber the dullards, and even the cuts which slack behind will have a few surprise riffs buried throughout. Waters is easily the star of this show, one of the more 'complete package', fully realized axe-men in the niche outside of Mustaine or the Hannemen/King coalition. Chops for days, performed cleanly and meticulously, with the ability to fire off competent if not immortal lead guitars anywhere. There's a precision and technicality to his playing that certainly placed the band within the 'tech thrash' niche without resorting to excessive, inane wanking, and I'm especially impressed with some of his lofty, harmonized syncopated melodies. Jeff can certainly throw-down at a moderate pace for the mandatory neck-jerking that fueled so much of the late 80s thrash, but he definitely has a bit of neo-classical edge to his shredding which oozed class, and most of the rhythm progressions here stuck and stayed that way so they're instantly recognizable even 35 years after the album first dropped!

He's also got some pretty good damned bass-lines on this disc, and besides Blacky of Voivod this is probably one of the better Canadian albums to deliver that reliable low-end. Ray Hartmann's drumming is hardly up on the level of Lombardo or Hoglan but it's snappy and energetic and sounds great in the mix to support Water's particular thrashing fits. More surprising is the sinister edge of Randy Rampage's vocals, coming over from the worthy punk of D.O.A. to deliver some snarling highs, some pitch, some nastiness, one of the better cross-genre performances I've ever heard, probably a shock to those who knew him from the simpler basslines and songwriting of his mainstay. He's awesome here and for my money perhaps the best vocalist that ever fronted this group, which I never would have expected. He's like a Great White North parallel to Holy Terror's Keith Deen, and I think a lot of the riff-writing here also mirrors that West Coast band, but it's more polished and accessible and I think that explains so much of the appeal this record had.

The showcase for this record is certainly the one-two punch of the "Crystal Ann" acoustic intro and "Alison Hell" itself, which together with the cover artwork conjure up a dreamy nightmare redolent of a lot of the popular 80s franchises, like a Nightmare On Elm Street or Lady in White or Hellraiser 2: Hellbound. The title track is easily one of the best thrash tunes of its year of release, still timeless, with some epic spiraling harmonies that plummet you down into its creepy namesake scenario while showing off the estimable talents in Jeff's repertoire. Everything from the little guitar shrieks, to the higher pitched vocal howls or little operatic break in the bridge just screams of success, and the lead sequence in there reminds me very much of Andy LaRocque's style in another breakout Roadrunner act, King Diamond, whose album Conspiracy the same year is a pretty good comparison. A few other standout moments for me were the clinical Deception Ignored-like melodic break in "W.T.Y.D.", or the unforgettable "Burns Like a Buzzsaw Blade" and its cringey sex lyrics, but there are really no stinkers in this lot...

Instead, a few tunes just fail to live up to that opening, while still remaining competent entries into the genre as a whole, and it does create a bit of a lopsided excitement where the 'Side A' shines a lot brighter than the 'Side B', or at least that's how I thought of it for years when I only owned the cassette. Having said that, Alice in Hell still feels pretty relevant today, a record that had all the potential to enter that space dominated by Megadeth and Metallica. Ambitious enough without going too over the top, unique if not terribly original. It also, sadly, stands as one of those early creative peaks in the medium; I won't say there is too steep of an immediate decline, as Never, Neverland provided at least a moderately catchy, meat & potatoes thrash experience, but I don't think any of the subsequent material comes close to my appreciation for this debut. Again, I hope to be proven wrong as I re-explore the decades of Jeff Waters' dedication to this craft, but Alice in Hell is a hard act to follow.

Verdict: Win [8.75/10] (No one listened to your fears)

https://www.annihilatormetal.com/