All for You

This was the last album that I heard of Annihilator’s newest offerings with Dave Padden doing the vocals, and of them it’s definitely the worst. The blame for this can’t be solely laid upon the head of said vocal flunky, but the vast majority of the musical cock ups that plague this troubled album are clearly in the voice department. Between all of the nu-metal and core sounding garbage, the really abysmal spoken parts that Annihilator has almost never pulled off well due to inferior lyrics, and the really frightening sounding mock-opera baritone singing, this just can’t help but beg like a crack addicted panhandler to be bombarded with the rudest derision possible.

Sometimes Jeff Waters throws out some really inspired thrash riff madness that rivals his older material, but the ridiculousness of the vocals all but drowns it out. “Demon Dance” just goes all out with those fast as hell Slayer riffs like no tomorrow, and occasionally breaks down into some decent melodic material, but during the verses Padden comes in with this really ugly metalcore meets System Of A Down vocal vomit. Picture the hottest date you’ve ever had and you’ve got the music, then throw on some really baggy pants, fake teeth, a big red funny nose, and some size 30 clown shoes and you’ll have what the vocals do to this song. The guy actually does a mock gay speaking voice during the closing seconds of what would have been a great song.

There’s a few other songs on here where there are some pretty solid moments that end up getting dragged down by either a really lousy vocal performance or too many unrelated ideas being thrown in. “Both Of Me” would be a solid speed metal song and a slight improvement on the “Refresh The Demon” sound of the Jeff Waters vocal era if it didn’t have that really boring 1 minute clean interlude right after a solid speed intro. Padden does this really goofy sounding spoken part right at the end of the interlude that really doesn’t need to be there. I’m assuming he’s trying to sounding like a guy with multiple personalities, but instead makes Dave Mustaine’s spoken interludes sound like Shakespearean theater. During the verses and choruses of this one Padden’s vocals actually sound like a semi-decent variant on Matt Barlow, and if he’d just stick to this sound rather than trying to imitate Aaron Randall’s “Brain Dance” antics on every song he’d sound much better.

A couple other songs that manage a level of respectability include “Bled” and a couple parts of the overlong “Doctor Psycho”. There’s some lousy singing and half assed ideas frolicking about on both of these, not to mention that the bass gets so active that the songs almost sound funky, but the latter has some good speed metal going on after the first 2 and ½ minutes, while the former has some solid riffs buried under some lame, emo sounding vocals. But beyond these songs, there isn’t much that qualifies as good metal, and in some cases stuff that is nowhere near metal. “All For You” sounds like a really bad version of a Killswitch Engage song with an extremely repetitive groove to it that makes Machine Head sound like Dark Angel. “The One” sounds like it was ripped off of Stained’s last top 40 single, while “Holding On” will probably find a nice home amongst some compilation of really sappy adult alternative ballads in the vain of Oasis or maybe Blink 182 during their later years.

If you liked any of Annihilator’s material before this one, even the lackluster material with Jeff Waters doing the vocal work; don’t bother with this piece of garbage. If Waters had done the vocals himself, we might have had something maybe slightly better than “Refresh The Demon”, but Padden really does some serious damage when he’s trying to sound either dramatic or in any other way emotional. The only way that someone can explain how this band went from “Waking The Fury” to this is by something that this band is fairly well known for, and that is trend hopping. Although you can often get good music out of bands who do this, given the horrid nature of the metalcore scene sullying the airwaves of late, you won’t find it here.

Originally submitted to (www.metal-observer.com) on October 26, 2008.