In prep for this review I perused their back catalog and not too shabby.  Some clunkers and uneven songs/albums, but for the majority of Ballistic, Sadistic, this is some damn good speed metal with some thrash parts thrown in.  Speed/Thrash, I guess.  10 songs in 46 minutes and Jeff also sings and plays some bass in addition to his guitar duties with Aaron Homma on guitars, Rich Hinks on bass and Fabio Alessandrini on drums.  Check out the drummers last part of his last name-no relation to me, at least I don’t think, but he is from Italy and I’m also Italian.  What the hell is going on here??

“Armed to the Teeth” opens the album with some nice guitar work and a nice mid-paced drum pattern.  Vocals are a bit too up front in the mix, should have been scaled back a bit.  The rhythm section with the chorus is nice with some killer double bass action and of course ripping guitar slides and solos.  The song remains mid-paced and has a bit too happy jumpiness to it, for my normal liking, but I am really digging the instrumentation production, especially the plucky bass guitar moments and the double bass is fucking thunderous.  The song picks up pace right at the end.  I also notice, the guitar sound, although not as heavy, has a very similar tone to Impact is Imminent from Exodus.

“The Attitude” has some terrific guitar work and great rhythm parts and the speed picks up towards the end again, like the various parts of this song.  I of course love the fast singing chorus at the 1.25 part “Fuck your Attitude” over and over and I just start swinging all over the place.  This is one of the best songs on the album and the fast parts really go full throttle.  I actually think because the fast part gets pretty fast if Fabio would have thrown in a little ditty of a blast beat, over the chorus, it actually would have worked quite nicely.

“I Am Warfare” should definitely have had a damn blast beat.  The song is super- fast speed/thrash with excellent vocals and instrumentation all over the place with a few cool vocal effects added for good measure to slice your head off your gross and disgusting stump of a body.  And I never thought I’d be doing a Holy Shit moment for this album, but sure enough the Holy Shit moment is at the 1.52 part with the drums pounding and guitars and then right into the mid-paced stop n start groove riffing with a bunch of pumped in war sound effects with tracer bullets, machine gun fire chain reaction shredded brains…ooops I veered off into Sodom territory, but yep this part is absolutely crushing.

The rest of Ballistic, Sadistic follows similar formulaic speed thrash patterns.  You get your groove numbers like “Dressed up for Evil” (with some nice little ditty bass solos) and then more speedier numbers such as “The End of the Lie”.  There maybe is a little too mid-paced moments on this, for my liking, but overall there still are enough speedier tracks for me.  Other than the vocals a tad too high in the mix, the production of all the instruments is excellent for this style of metal.  The album cover is a bit too bush league, c’mon Annihilator you can do better than this cover.  But at the end of the day Ballistic, Sadistic is catchy, well-played/written and a pretty damn fine speed metal album.  Get it now!

Don’t read too much into the eponymous title of this record. This is certainly not a reinvention or re-imagining of the band. If you’ve followed Annihilator over the years, nothing on this record is going to surprise you. Guitarist, founder and primary driving force Jeff Waters does pretty much what he’s always done – high energy thrash with a tight barrage of fast riffs, wailing leads and the occasional grooving breakdown to interrupt the pure fury.

Though Waters dropped the pretense of Annihilator being a full band years ago, he’s joined here by vocalist and guitarist Dave Padden, the longest-running member besides Waters with seven years of service, and drummer Ryan Ahoff. Waters himself handles guitars and bass and, of course, wrote all nine original tunes on the record with the assistance of Padden on two tracks.

The record opens with the longest track, “The Trend,” a tirade against all things trendy once the song finally gets started after a too-long buildup. There’s an interesting hard rock vocal delivery on the bridge that’s one of the better things that Padden does here. From there, things move quickly into familiar territory as “Coward” blasts out of the gate with thrashing riffs, slashing leads and a solid breakdown.

One of the biggest weaknesses of Annihilator, though, is the same that the band’s last few albums have had (and it’s really a recurring problem throughout their history), and that’s Padden’s vocals. While in the more aggressive mode, Padden sounds similar to most of Annihilator’s singers over the years. When he tries to back off a little, though, they get annoying. They’re bothersome over the machine-gun riffing of “Ambush,” and they’re really weak on “Betrayed,” bringing down one of those circusy riffs that Waters has shown a fondness for over the years.

Around the midpoint, Waters unleashes some new twists with a few songs that are a bit out of character for Annihilator. The first is “25 Seconds” which opens with a cool grooving bass and drum lick that has an almost jazzy feel. That lasts for, well, 25 seconds, at which point a screaming metal song breaks out. The bass grovoe returns throughout the song, and I like it better than a lot of the metal parts, though Waters does deliver a cool, spacy tapping lead. Waters continues to show off his bass skills on the opening of “Nowhere to Go,” which drops into a nice, more modern groove. Padden’s vocals, though, have no passion on the verse. He sounds his best, oddly, on the more melodic chorus, but it’s probably a little too commercial for the tastes of most Annihilator fans.

One of the better songs on the record is “The Other Side,” which opens with a solid galloping riff, reminiscent of early Metallica. It’s a theme that runs throughout the song, giving brief flashes of Metallica without ever sounding copycat. To give Padden credit where it’s due, I like his delivery on this song as it takes on a more hard rock feel.

Waters delivers an Eddie Van Halen-style lead lick to open “Death In Your Eyes,” which immediately falls into a thrash march, but passes over into a progressive mood for the chorus. The band drops a Pantera-influenced groove into the more hardcore “Payback,” before finally closing the record with a fairly faithful cover of Van Halen’s “Romeo Delight.”

Annihilator is an interesting record in a lot of ways. There are a few touches here and there that you don’t expect from Waters and Co., but overall it still sounds just like an Annihilator record. It’s not likely to make my top 10 list at the end of the year, but it’s a solid addition to the band’s catalog and worthy of attention for fans.

The full track listing is as follows:

“The Trend”
“Coward”
“Ambush”
“Betrayed”
“25 Seconds”
“Nowhere To Go”
“The Other Side”
“Death In Your Eyes”
“Payback”
“Romeo Delight”

Since releasing their classic ALICE IN HELL debut in 1989, ANNIHILATOR has consistently played heads-down, no-frills metal, led by guitar virtuoso JEFF WATERS.

Now, in 2009, Earache is proud to welcome one of the originators of the whole melodic-thrash style to it’s roster, with a brand new (13th) studio album set to be released in the new year. A selection of back catalogue albums are also due to be released at a later date.

ANNIHILATOR guitarist and main-man JEFF WATERS comments:

“Finding a label home for Annihilator in Europe has never been difficult. Finding a good, professional and stable one, that really knows metal, is another matter. We found one! Earache and Annihilator are going to make a great metal team and I can’t think of anyone else that should be putting the new Annihilator CD out but them! See you all in 2010!”

Earache Records label manager DAN TOBIN adds:

“Annihilator have continually flown the flag for metal in general and thrash in particular for many years, and with Jeff Waters at the helm have produced some of the most innovative and distinctive metal releases around. Earache looks forward to teaming up with Jeff and spreading the gospel of Annihilator far and wide with a killer new album that is sure to surprise a lot of people with its genuine intensity and aggression.”

For more ANNIHILATOR news and info, head to http://www.annihilatormetal.com

Check out the band on MySpace at http://www.myspace.com/annihilatorofficial

Metal is Annihilator’s 11th studio release and while there are a couple of twists and turns, the core of the riffing & vocal arrangements are classic Annihilator. “Clown Parade” kicks things off in fine fashion with a tight, straight up Thrash riff and some amazing soloing by Nevermore’s Jeff Loomis. There’s even a “Whoa!” sing-along bridge after the second lead break that would make Iron Maiden proud…very cool! “Downright Dominate” is another strong one loaded down with wicked riffing & soloing. Guest shredder Alexi Laiho (Children Of Bodom) fits quite nicely alongside Waters’ own stellar playing. In Flames’ Jesper Stromblad shows up on “Haunted”, one of the albums more frantic Thrash cuts, and just shreds out!

The album is not without its questionable moments, though. The name-checking of classic Metal bands in the song “Army Of One” is a little cheesy…but, then again, so was “Kraf Dinner”. The opening melody of “Couple Suicide” is a little juvenile and the song is trying too hard to sound like Killswitch Engage. Definitely a departure for Waters here…kudos for trying.

Overall, while not Annihilator’s best release, it’s certainly not the lame duck many fans predicted. If you can’t recognize this music on first listen as having Waters’ hands all over it, you’ve probably never heard the band before. Too many were overly concerned about the guest appearances (from members of Lamb Of God, Trivium, Arch Enemy, & others) harming the album, and they really didn’t. They fit nicely, in all honesty, and are surrounded by patented Annihilator styling. But, I must admit, seeing all the names listed on the sticker made me think I was looking at a rap album. (Can any rappers make an album on their own?) Anyway, don’t let appearances fool you. Metal is just that…a strong, well thought out album. It won’t please everyone, but it doesn’t have to.

As I watched Jeff Waters shred his ass off for a couple of hours, I kept wondering why didn’t this band ever reach the status of, say, a Metallica, Megadeth or Slayer? It certainly wasn’t for lack of talent or, at least in the early going, originality. Maybe they arrived on the scene too late. Maybe it’s because Waters is Canadian, not exactly a metal hotbed. Maybe they just weren’t promoted right. Whatever the reason, it’s a shame.

That’s not to say that everything Waters has recorded has been gold. He’s done his share of crap, and there’s a testament to it here with the video for the ballad “Only Be Lonely.” But there’s no way you can sit there and watch him play and not be impressed.

The more interesting disc of this DVD, to me, is the first one. It follows the band from the release party of Alice in Hell through various TV appearances, live bootlegs and official videos. It takes you through the whole saga, with Waters changing personnel more often than Spinal Tap changed drummers. In fact, it’s funny to listen to the early interviews from around the time of Alice and Never, Neverland, where Waters is talking about how it’s been basically a one-man show up to that point, and he’s excited about getting other band members involved in the next album. Now, 15-plus years later, we know it’s always been just him doing his thing. So much for those plans.

The TV interview clips provide a great deal of comic relief on this DVD, as we see time and again interviewers who have no clue who this band is trying to discuss their music. The absolute funniest moment comes from a Canadian morning show where the interviewer is completely clueless and obviously can’t even understand why anyone would listen to the music. He asks some classic questions like “Why do you have to play so loud?” and, in introducing the video for “Alison Hell,” “Why do your song titles have to be so mean and nasty? Why not ‘Alice in Wonderland?'” Though Waters handles it professionally, you can see in his eyes that he’d like to choke the guy.

The video focuses mainly on the first two albums, King of the Kill and the 1999/2000 reunion with Alice vocalist Randy Rampage and drummer Ray Hartman. Precious little time is spent on Set the World on Fire and almost no time on the first disc is given to Remains or Refresh the Demon. I suppose that’s fitting since they’re probably the weakest three albums. Set the World on Fire, with its more commercial sound, was a great waste of the talents of both Waters and drummer Mike Mangini, in my opinion, and the other two were OK, but not really up to par with the rest of the Annihilator catalog.

The disc also contains seven official videos for “Alison Hell,” “Stonewall,” “Set the World on Fire,” “King of the Kill,” “21,” “Only Be Lonely” and “Syn.Kill 1.” I would have liked to see more high-quality live footage, as well. The bootleg stuff is cool, but it really doesn’t do the music justice. But I suppose there’s only so much space on a disc.

The second disc features interviews with Waters and various other past members of the band, offering an in-depth retrospective from Waters’ early years through the Annihilator demos, the official recordings and the future.

Of course, at this point, there are six more years of band history that aren’t discussed on this DVD, but it’s still a must-have for fans of Annihilator and technical thrash in general.