Annihilator: Feast

A feast of metal thrashing mad intelligence.

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Canada’s Annihilator have long had a reputation for delivering technically sophisticated thrash, and Feast will do nothing to harm their stature.

Mainman Jeff Waters yet again combines a virtuoso headiness with some brutally effective riffs, while vocalist Dave Padden has a growling menace that suits the songs. From the fury of Deadlock onwards, Feast is stockpiled with the sort of material that will guarantee moshpits everywhere. No Surrender is a racing tirade, Demon Code has a darkly rhythmic eeriness and Fight The World thrusts two fingers straight into the eyes of those who decry metal.

There’s also a limited edition version of the album with a bonus CD called Re-Kill. This features re-recordings of 15 tracks from the band’s past, done because a lot of these are currently unavailable. Sure, they lack the magic of the originals, but they prove the current line-up does have a connection to Annihilator’s history.

Malcolm Dome
Malcolm Dome

Malcolm Dome had an illustrious and celebrated career which stretched back to working for Record Mirror magazine in the late 70s and Metal Fury in the early 80s before joining Kerrang! at its launch in 1981. His first book, Encyclopedia Metallica, published in 1981, may have been the inspiration for the name of a certain band formed that same year. Dome is also credited with inventing the term "thrash metal" while writing about the Anthrax song Metal Thrashing Mad in 1984. With the launch of Classic Rock magazine in 1998 he became involved with that title, sister magazine Metal Hammer, and was a contributor to Prog magazine since its inception in 2009. He died in 2021.