By: Anders

Posted: May 23, 2007

A new and very serious album from Annihilator and mastermind Jeff Waters is what "Metal" should be. Besides the normal recording line up of vocalist Dave Padden and drummer extraordinaire Mike Mangini, Waters has allied himself with the likes of Jeff Loomis, Danko Jones, Angela Gossow, Steve Kudlow, Alexi Laiho, Jesper Strömblad, Michael Amott and so forth, star after star in the world of metal guests each track on this album.

Well, the expectations to such an album must be high and do Waters and Annihilator offer us metal? Of course they do, "Metal" is a very metal album, all from classical Annihilator thrashers to more modern progressive thrash-like tracks, there are tons of great guitar work on the album, I can only imagine that this album will accompany many guitar freaks in their wet dreams. There are also some cool bass lines and elements on the album, nice to see Waters also have used time on that part, and not only the guitar. The drumming is decent, though not as slaying as Mangini can make it, but I guess the focus has been kept on the guitars and not the drumming, as Mangini as easy as nothing, can sweep away most competition when drumming as amazing as he can.

So far so good, the song writing is suffering a lot from the great guitar and the different performers, and the vocals, they aren't up to snuff, the vocals through out the album bores the hell out of me and does more often ruin the whole of the song, instead of making it better. Too many experiments and attempts to make each song unique vocal wise, instead of just crooning out of the highway and letting the metal scream dominate, quite a shame I think. The compositions in themselves aren't that exciting as well, they are also different and again it seems like they are made to be unique for the sake of being unique, instead of just flowing away, and taking all with them.

"Metal" offers a lot of great guitar work, but have some weak points, which makes it a good guitar album, but a weak metal album, on the verge of being annoying due to the vocals, if one can abstract from the vocals, the album might rule, though I haven't been able to cut the vocals away, as they tend to fill a whole lot of the sound picture when they are present, a lot of credit for the idea behind this album, though the perfection of the ideas into hard hitting music hasn't been accomplished to well, and a bit too many clichés are present as well, unfortunately.

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