Metal

An alternate title for this review could be "Clown Parade", but it would sound way too harsh and disrespectful on the part of all the countless gifted musicians and metal legends (ranging from Jeff Loomis to Anders Björler, from Michael Amott to Jesper Strömblad, from Will Adler to the recently passed away Alexi Laiho, and even guys like Steve Lips of Anvil fame and some historical Exciter members) who took part in the making of this wretched piece of... plastic, indeed. Not metal, for sure. I know what metal sounds like, and this sure ain't it. It might resemble it on a very surface level, but that's all there is to it really. Annihilator's 2007 album, ironically titled "Metal" in what on paper looks like an all-encompassing, fairly admirable (if a bit megalomaniac and self-aggrandizing) celebration of the genre in all its different facets, doesn't feel at all like the work of a legendary metal veteran and guitar hero as Jeff Waters clearly is (as testified by highly-regarded classics such as "Alice in Hell", "Never Neverland" and "King of the Kill"): "Metal" feels more like a focus-group attempt to create an utterly inoffensive, smoothed out imitation of heavy metal tropes by corporate-minded suite-and-tie guys during the dreadful emo/pop era of the 2000's, after hearing a bunch of Arch Enemy and Trivium records and thinking that stuff was still way too abrasive and convoluted for the general audience to enjoy.

Even calling this album "metalcore", like many did in previous reviews, doesn't feel yet adequate enough: even when the album sounds "tr00 metal" and "old sk00l" on paper, filling all the required stylistic checkboxes, it still doesn't in substance and general approach. 2004's "All for You" did clearly, unapologetically dabble in metalcore and nu-metal tropes for a large portion of its runtime, feeling way more out-there and transparent in its aping of 2000's radio-rock clichés, in a way compared to which "Metal" ends up sounding relatively tame and non-threatening to the average, less discerning metalhead. However, that's only a symptom of the main issue: while "All for You" remains undoubtedly Annihilator's worst album by a long shot (as well as one of the most absurdly, embarrassingly, unexplainably misguided records I've ever heard by a well-respected metal band, rivaling with the likes of "St. Anger" and other anti-classics of that league), "Metal" on the other hand stands out for its utter, appalling hollowness - being one of the most disingenuous, offensive, artistically bankrupt attempts at regaining commercial relevance I've ever seen: it manages to sound painfully formulaic and at the same time, in some kind of weird way, seemingly unaware of the mechanics and the inner workings of the very music genre it's trying to imitate (which sounds even more baffling, considering Waters' insanely good track record as a metal musician and songwriter, not to mention the vast number of metal icons and veterans featured on here). So, let's break the album down and see what's exactly wrong with it.

If you're familiar with the nitty-gritty of Annihilator's troubled history, you know how things went: the super-controversial (albeit in my eyes still extremely fascinating and criminally underrated) industrial dabbling of 1997's "Remains was the perfect definition of a career-ruiner for the band. The album tanked harder than any recent DCEU flick at the box office, and sales for the next ten years (no matter how good or bad the records were) remained relatively low. Until Jeff made his most sinister sellout of all time with "Metal": an album that was clearly built top-down with the sole and only intent to have a perfect excuse to feature tons of famous metal musicians who were clearly doing better than our fav Canadian tech-thrash wizard. The choice of names (most of them being staples of the melodeath/metalcore scene of the time, plus a bunch of obscure underdogs from the Canadian scene and some of Jeff's childhood hometown heroes) is way too convenient to look like a coincidence. And, for all intents and purposes, it worked: sales with this album started growing once again, and Annihilator was introduced to a generation of post-90's In Flames/Arch Enemy fans (not to mention the huge, near-cultlike following grown around At the Gates by then, if only for "Slaughter of the Soul") who had no clue about classics such as "Alice in Hell", and found in Dave Padden a perfect vocalist for their taste, while Randy Rampage's vocals would probably sound way too grating on their poor little ears. Besides this, it's also quite disturbing to skim through the album's booklet and find it filled with endless advertising for Jeff's own gear, reinforcing the perception that this record is nothing but a shameless excuse for self-promotion. And the painfully lame music does nothing to dissipate said perception - quite the contrary.

No single track on this album sounds remotely inspired or sincere. No song on here seems driven by a genuine creative urge (something that could at least still be felt on the flawed "Schizo Deluxe"), and everything sounds phoned in to a degree that has never been seen on any other Annihilator record to date - not even the more recent, blatantly desperate "Suicide Society". Very few of the ideas on "Metal" sound even remotely memorable: riffs are entirely unremarkable and almost interchangeable, sounding like an afterthought compared to the choruses, which seem to be where all the actual songwriting went. And this is the secret problem "Metal" suffers from: despite all the bragging about "being old school", "living in the past" and "ignoring the trend while many pretend" the lyrics of "Army of One" are cluttered with, these are just pop-punk tunes dressed up in ultra-generic heavy/thrash/groove metal clothing. At no point this is more apparent than on opening track "Clown Parade": supposedly a speed metal number, its fast riffing sounds painfully limp, weak, faceless and inconsequential to the music nonetheless, lacking any energy or punch you would normally expect from speed metal - while the chorus sounds like a laughable Green Day imitation that comes out of the blue to take the spotlight, ending up being the only reason you remember this tune (aside from an admittedly cool anthemic choir in the middle section). However, even without the need to resort to overt pop-punkisms like "Clown Parade" does, songs like "Army of One" and "Smothered" reveal their true colors when listened carefully: their riffing sounds just as useless and generic, being there just to fill space during the verses while waiting for the choruses these tunes are clearly built around; I can't think of a more anti-metal songwriting approach than this. The accusations of radio pandering are reinforced by the utterly flat production, sounding robotic and lifeless even by 2000's metal standards. No instrument is emphasized whatsoever: the guitar tone is as dull, smoothed out and non-threatening as it can get, the drums might as well be programmed despite the credit given once again to Mike Mangini (the poor man, having to sit through both of Annihilator's worst two records ever), and the vocals are just kinda there, floating over the music without a care. Was this really Jeff's idea of how an album named "Metal" should sound like? Utterly toothless and inoffensive, like any fucking pop-rock album? No, I take that back - even pop-rock albums possess far more dynamic mixing compared to this abomination.

Everything on "Metal" is so painfully generic, hastily put together and redundant that it ends up sounding (intentionally or not) like a lame approximation of something you heard before, either by other bands or even Annihilator themselves. The main riff of "Army of One" is a less incisive version of "Brain Dead" by Exodus, "Detonation" is an unabashed "Children of the Grave" ripoff with some aggro-rock/groove metal flavor added to the mix, the chorus of "Operation Annihilation" is just "Set the World on Fire" all over again, and "Chasing the High" is nothing but a slight variation of "Ultra-Motion" - most notably its opening fast-picked riff (admittedly still one of the few memorable riffs on this record), and don't even get me started on the recycling of the "Fun Palace" lick that was already featured ten years prior on "Tricks and Traps". The more the album tries to show off legit aggression (such as on "Downright Dominate", "Operation Annihilation" and "Kicked"), the more bone-headed and half-assed it becomes, in the vein of any pedestrian Pantera-worship band infesting the scene during the 2000's. This time around, it seems like Jeff lost his usual magic touch for powerful, mesmerizing riffage, and even the multiple guests invited to contribute in the lead guitar department do very little to make the songs any more interesting (although I'm quite fond of the work done by Lips on "Army of One", and even Alexi Laiho did a pretty good job with his trademark shredding on "Downright Dominate"). The only track that seems to possess some vague semblance of ambitious songwriting and feels like a proper metal song is "Haunted" - bearing some pretty cool technical thrash riffing that still sounds a bit generic and quite reminiscent of the band's past works nonetheless; on a good Annihilator record, this would still qualify as one of the lesser tracks. Even the intro riff of "Downright Dominate" might be okay I guess, before the song devolves into overt aggro-pseudo-metal territory.

As vapid and lame as all these tracks might be, none of them is however one bit as awful as the song I'm going to discuss right now, which is so bad it deserves its own paragraph: I'm talking about the glam/metalcore bastardized hybrid known as "Couple Suicide", featuring a vocal duet no one asked for between famous Canadian hard rock musician Danko Jones and... Arch Enemy vocalist Angela Gossow? What the fuck, really? This is the definition of a match made in hell: Danko's vocal lines are abysmal, bearing such a degree of sugar-coated cheesiness my words can't quite describe, and they don't merge at all with Angela's randomic, ill-fitting screams thrown here and there almost as an afterthought (well, the album's inept mixing doesn't help things either). The upbeat riffing sounds like straight-out commercial metalcore, but the song is so clumsily crafted in its questionable merge of styles that it sounds like everything and nothing at the same time, leaving you both disgusted and confused all at once, not knowing what you're really listening to. This might rival with "The One" as Annihilator's worst song ever - but in all honesty, it feels so devoid of identity and clear direction compared to "The One"'s overt, straightforward radio-friendly awfulness that it doesn't even manage to earn place #1 for shittiness. It's really that incompetent.

Oh, and of course we have to talk about Dave Padden's vocals - exciting, ain't it? On this album, his trademark lifeless vocals manage to sound even more energyless, static and phoned-in than usual. Dave, being close to Jeff like no other musician in the band at the time, knew what this record was really about (hint: not music, for sure), and he's clearly half-assing it even by his own embarrassing standards: on tracks like "Clown Parade" he's clearly bored out of his mind like on no other album he's ever done with the band, and even during the more modern-sounding tracks, his usual metalcore screams possess far less vigor and drive compared to the likes of "All for You" or "Schizo Deluxe". That's a blessing and a curse at the same time: his screams are generally awful, so it's kind of a relief to hear him being a bit more restrained - but at the same time, come the fuck on, this is one of the most tired vocal performances I've ever heard on a metal album, made even worse by the bad mixing giving it a weirdly boxed in, unprofessional echoing. However, I'd dare to say that Padden's vocal performance this time around doesn't feel particularly crucial to the album's overt shittiness: these songs are so weak and useless that no quality vocal performance could save them (as demonstrated by the album's recent re-recording with Stu Block handling vocal duties) - and even the usually much-dreaded Padden choruses that plague the other records he's featured on end up being ultimately pretty fun and harmless on this album. Aside from the awful pop-punk dabbling of "Clown Parade", the choruses on tracks such as "Army of One", "Smothered", "Haunted" and "Detonation" are kind of catchy and neat overall, if still not particularly memorable. Again, keep in mind - this is clearly an album built around catchy choruses: everything else on here is absolute filler.

Ultimately, "Metal" doesn't even feel like a real album: it's just Waters begging the modern metal scene for attention, and guising it as "celebrating the genre at large". However, the album's utter incompetence, chronical lack of ideas and general apathy towards the genre it claims to champion do still feel baffling to experience - especially coming from such a revered metal legend, responsible for lots of my favorite records of all time. It could be said that "Metal" feels really metal in the same way that a toy gun for preschool kids qualifies as a real weapon: and, to take the metaphor a bit further, I'd say that Jeff had really no bullets to shoot this time around. Even "All for You", as spectacularly abysmal as it was for the most part, still featured two or three bangers I listen to from time to time: "Metal", on the other hand, is consistently dull and unremarkable from start to finish, with the only exception in the form of the memorably awful "Couple Suicide". In a way, this record is also a sign of its times, a reflection of the sad state of mainstream metal around 2007, flooded by such a huge sea of useless plastic that makes marine pollution look trivial by comparison. Everything you can find on here, you can also find elsewhere in a better, more genuine form; however, if you're really curious to check out this turd of a record, I'd suggest you to pick up the re-recorded 2022 version as the lesser of two evils: it's got better production, no Padden on vocals, and Dave Lombardo killing it on drums. It still doesn't make up for its utter hollowness and vapidity from an artistic standpoint, though.