Waking the Fury

I enjoy this cd alot at the beginning. The first track, Ultra Motion, is a straight ahead in your face thrasher. Unfortunately I had not heard Carnival Diablos at the time of this review, so I could not compare it to that, but I hear people have called that album a disappointment. This is not a disappointment for me at all, although I thought for a moment at the beginning of track 6 that it might turn out to be one. The sixth song, Prime Time Killing, starts out with a nu-metallish sound which scared the hell out of me, since the album had started out so strong and I wondered why the band would go and fuck up a good thing like that. But the song itself is not so bad, about thirty seconds into it the nu-ness goes away, and only pops up for a few short intervals throughout the song. Still, this is probably the weakest track on the album. The next lowspot is Nothing To Me. It's a catchy song, but too hardrockish for what I want to hear when I put on a thrash cd. At least it's better than Prime Time Killing. Good thing the last song ends with some decent thrashing. The guitars have a fuzzy quality to them, which I don't remember from previous Annihilator albums I've listened to, although I admit it's been awhile since I've listened to one. Overall the album reminds me of a cross between Overkill and what Megadeth was trying to achieve with The World Needs a Hero but failed so miserably at. It contains it's fair amount of thrash throughout but kind of lets off the steam after it hits that nu-metallish song. If it had kept up the speed all the way through I would have given this a four, but as it is it only gets a very strong three.