Annihilator - Set The World On Fire (1993)

[BlackSmith]

What do I have to say about this album from Annihilator? Well, to start off this sounds different from the first two other Annihilator albums and not in a good way. It's like Jeff Waters & his band have been replaced with Pop Singers who are forced by their record label to sound like a Metal band despite only having done Pop Music and having no experience in Metal.

The first song Set The World on Fire sounds like The Fun Palace in their Never, Neverland album a little bit but that's beside the point. Halfway into the song, you start realizing that you're not listening to what is Thrash or Speed Metal but rather Pop mixed in with Metal due to the vocals. The vocals along with the instruments make it sound more like the album belongs in a Teenage romance drama flick from the late 1990s to early 2000s rather than a Metal album. This problem plaques the entire album and it's disappointing to see as a Metal fan. The most Metal song in this album is Knights Jump Queen and that's not saying much. This would've worked better if this was considered a Pop Album.

My final verdict for this is 2.5/10. Sorry Jeff Waters but your band blew this one.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

Holy shit that's terrible!! Is no one safe from being replaced by pop singing imposters? We must get to the bottom of this, I simply won't be abe to rest until I find out what they've done with the real Jeff Waters & his band!

[AlSymerz]

Jeff Waters is a talented man but his ability to keep a band together is not good. I think he's realised now days that he's not a singer and therefore he has to pay someone a fair amount to do that job for him. But those years where he was trying to cut every cost he could so he hired shitty players and players that didn't fit were some of the worst years of Annihilator.

[BlackSmith]

17 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Holy shit that's terrible!! Is no one safe from being replaced by pop singing imposters? We must get to the bottom of this, I simply won't be abe to rest until I find out what they've done with the real Jeff Waters & his band!

We must solve the conspiracy! Seriously though it seems some of these songs such as The Edge & Don't Bother Me would be half-decent Pop Songs instead of being considered Heavy Metal songs. 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

I had never even heard of Canadian band Annihilator back in the day, they were a 2nd tier or more realistically probably a third tier thrash band that didn't really get started til the first wave of thrash was already well on the decline. It's only been within the last several years that I have become aware of this band and their album Alice in Hell's existence, although I've not actually heard more than about 30 seconds of it because mediocre 34 year old third tier thrash albums aren't something I have much interest in, that'd be the Orca's wheelhouse.

But I have to ask, what's the point of digging up shitty 30 year old pop metal albums to review when there are so many hundreds and thousands of really good high quality albums you could be listening to?

[BlackSmith]

4 hours ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I had never even heard of Canadian band Annihilator back in the day, they were a 2nd tier or more realistically probably a third tier thrash band that didn't really get started til the first wave of thrash was already well on the decline. It's only been within the last several years that I have become aware of this band and their album Alice in Hell's existence, although I've not actually heard more than about 30 seconds of it because mediocre 34 year old third tier thrash albums aren't something I have much interest in, that'd be the Orca's wheelhouse.

But I have to ask, what's the point of digging up shitty 30 year old pop metal albums to review when there are so many hundreds and thousands of really good high quality albums you could be listening to?

Some of the bad stuff needs to be talked about too ya know?

[AlSymerz]

It does seem a bit odd writing a review of a terrible album when you could have written about an album like Alice In Hell. But each to their own

 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

49 minutes ago, BlackSmith said:

Some of the bad stuff needs to be talked about too ya know?

I'm all in for robust, honest, pull no punches criticism of music, both positive and negative. So yeah, I agree that some of the bad stuff needs to be talked about. But if you're gonna go back 30 years to highlight a long forgotten album by writing a review and starting a new thread to bring it to everyone's attention, then pick one worth revisiting. Pick one that brings something to the table and will stand up to some scrutiny. Why waste time exhuming ancient 30 year old 2.5/10 relics you don't even like that have long been dead and buried just to execute them all over again? Let the dead rest in peace and dignity.

[BlackSmith]

8 minutes ago, GoatmasterGeneral said:

I'm all in for robust, honest, pull no punches criticism of music, both positive and negative. So yeah, I agree that some of the bad stuff needs to be talked about. But if you're gonna go back 30 years to highlight a long forgotten album by writing a review and starting a new thread to bring it to everyone's attention, then pick one worth revisiting. Pick one that brings something to the table and will stand up to some scrutiny. Why waste time exhuming ancient 30 year old 2.5/10 relics you don't even like that have long been dead and buried just to execute them all over again? Let the dead rest in peace and dignity.

Yeah I agree. I'm new to this reviewing stuff so forgive me.

[JonoBlade]

There is some merit to discussing this album. Alice in Hell is about as close to a perfect debut as you can get. A few cracks had appeared in the follow up but the vocalist was still decent.

Set the World on Fire jumped the shark on a rocket powered skateboard, wearing a clown suit.

So, while an odd choice for a review without any context, you could make this part of a "where did they go so wrong" series.

Jeff Waters was a supreme talent. He wrote and produced Alice in Hell when he was about 22. Then things just never seemed to go quite right. But, having said that, he is still around and doing what he loves to do.

He runs a studio somewhere around Newcastle now. I looked into it, because I'd seriously go and record there just so I could ask, "dude, what happened?" 

In the grand scheme of things Annihilator is third tier but Alice in Hell was something special in terms of technical execution and production in 1989. It's hard to make that case to an old goat now, but trust me, if you didn't come across Alice in Hell when it first appeared, then you weren't keeping the right metal company. 

[AlSymerz]

Jeff's actually woken up now and realised that he can't do everything himself. His Metal II album, the second covers album, was a lot about him finding new musicians to work with and instead of going for the cheapest people just to fill holes he's looking for talent. They'll still play his music, and it might not ever get to the heights of Alice again but he's on a better track than he was all those years where he thought he could do everything from write to produce to manage.

 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

17 hours ago, JonoBlade said:

Alice in Hell is about as close to a perfect debut as you can get.

In the grand scheme of things Annihilator is third tier but Alice in Hell was something special in terms of technical execution and production in 1989. It's hard to make that case to an old goat now, but trust me, if you didn't come across Alice in Hell when it first appeared, then you weren't keeping the right metal company. 

Whoa, hang on a sec let me check my calendar, is this a rare Saturday appearance by my friend Jon-O?? What happened, the wife and kid went out shopping?

Gotta disagree on your assesment of Alice in Hell. I know my tastes don't lean toward the mainstream metal, and you might want to accuse me of looking at these things through the filter of my goat colored glasses, and maybe you'd be right. But believe it or not back in the 80's I was not yet this crusty old goat you see before you now. There was a time when I listened to stuff in this general vicinity. Obviously you and I would've had different perspectives and been keeping different metal company 34 years ago in 1989, what with you being a young schoolboy of 14 at the time and me being an older veteran metalhead twice your age. So it's not at all surprising that we see things differently here.

This album seems to be attempting to marry technical thrash with mainstream cock rock/hair metal. Not sure how this marriage came about but it certainly seems like a strange pairing to me, because by 1989 the core audiences for these two styles were fairly separate and distinct. But the record companies wanted everything to look and sound like commercial hair metal in the pre-grunge days of 1989 which created an over-saturation of the market that was impossible to escape, and which gave us albums like this turd all of which contibuted to drive that commercial heavy metal scene into an early grave by 1991.

I know there are many people who think of Alice as a 'classic' and that's certainly their perogative, but I just can't see it. We have two different styles of metal fused together here on this album and the band fails at both of them. I mean they're good musicians, but that's about all I can say for them. Shame they didn't have any good material to work with. The Annihilator debut ended up as a kind of mish-mash of glammy thrash or thrashy glam and most of it's just boring and generic heavy metal that isn't anywhere near heavy, fast or intense enough for the real hardcore thrash dudes, and it's not nearly catchy and sexy enough enough for the chicks and casuals that were keeping cock rock erect with truckloads of hairspray in '89. These songs just aren't very good. So no offense to anyone who might happen to like Alice in Hell but this record really sucks. 3.5/10

I mean look at some of the great thrash albums that came out in 1989: Beneath the Remains, Years of Decay, Fabulous Disaster, No More Color, Practice What You Preach, Hande With Care, Agent Orange, World Downfall, Horrified, Leave Scars, Annihilation of Civilization... You can't put Alice in Hell up next to these classics, the comparison is fucking embarrassing man. Mr Waters should be ashamed.

[RelentlessOblivion]

I like AiH fine enough, but its not a masterpiece by any means

[BlackSmith]

8 minutes ago, RelentlessOblivion said:

I like AiH fine enough, but its not a masterpiece by any means

Yeah, it's not anything special but it's still worth a listen to. The same goes for Never, Neverland.

[RelentlessOblivion]

That one I like a lot less actually, just more of the same Schlick, fine for some but not for me.

[AlSymerz]

3.5/10. Well that's my laughing fit for the day and I haven't even had my morning coffee. I don't think I'll see anything funnier all day, maybe all week!

[GoatmasterGeneral]

8 minutes ago, AlSymerz said:

3.5/10. Well that's my laughing fit for the day and I haven't even had my morning coffee. I don't think I'll see anything funnier all day, maybe all week!

Maybe I was a bit harsh. How about 3.8? It's a shit album no matter the number. Just my opinion of course you are all free to continue to enjoy it. 

[AlSymerz]

You can give it a 1 for all it matters because I will keep enjoying it but you can also rest easy knowing that you've made an old man laugh for the day.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

I cannot "rest easy" as I finally set up my new phone that's been sitting in a drawer for the last 21 months last night and I've managed to get every god damned app and webpage to display with a black background except for this one. Had no problem accomplishing this feat on my last phone, but not on this one. I won't be able to rest until I figure this out. Has something to do with going from Android 10 to 11 I think. I fucking hate technology. Or rather I hate that I'm too stupid to figure out how to get shit to work properly. Newer phone is supposed to be more user friendly not less.

EDIT: Alright I figured out how to force the black background for this site. And I got my music files moved to a new folder where my offline player can access them, so I guess now I can rest easy. If I could just find something similar to my old beer can pop top text notification sound I think I'd be all set. I picked an unobtrusive notification off the phone's menu but I don't like it. Maybe I should make Alice in Hell my new ring tone? Hahaha no, I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.

[AlSymerz]

I don't think I've ever used this site on my mobile and the damn thing needs charging so I can't test it right now. However I'm all for old fellas getting to rest easy so I went and had a look at the site with a different browser and the damn thing seems to override 'dark settings' as set by the browser. How fucking stupid!

There is options but it's going to depend how much effort you want to put in.

 

[GoatmasterGeneral]

No it's cool, I've got it now. There's a way to make Chrome force the dark to override whatever was not letting it do its thing. I absolutely hate looking at web pages with bright white backgrounds so where there's a will there's a way. 

[AlSymerz]

I figured there had to be a way but I don't use Chrome very often so it meant hunting for a solution.

[GoatmasterGeneral]

I used to use Firefox for my web adventures on the computer but being a low-tech guy it's just easier to use Chrome on my phone.

[AlSymerz]

Yeah my phone was the same until it started giving me fucking weather alerts every day. I was getting weather alerts for rough weather 500ks away and they were coming through at all weird hours of the day and it was pissing me off. The only way I found to get rid of them was to dump chrome and install Firefox. I don't do much browsing on my phone so it doesn't really matter but at least I'm not getting constant weather alerts.

[JonoBlade]

On 4/9/2023 at 5:55 AM, GoatmasterGeneral said:

Whoa, hang on a sec let me check my calendar, is this a rare Saturday appearance by my friend Jon-O?? What happened, the wife and kid went out shopping?

It surely was. It was a long weekend away from my desk and I just happened to see this Annihilator post and couldn't resist.

Set the World on Fire is definitely some kind of odd mish mash of thrash and glam that no one asked for, but on Alice in Hell I just don't hear it. I can see it in the fact that Randall P. Rampage has poofy hair and the band photo was taken with Vaseline on the lens, but I don't hear it. To me Alice in Hell is technical thrash with slightly harsh vocals. 

It is a masterclass in album production. A peppy sub-40 minutes without a clunker track, an acoustic intro (a must for an 80s thrash album) and clarity in the mix which, while not quite Rick Rubin Slayer production from that era, was pretty close from a 22 year old Canadian.