Waking the Fury

Waking the Fury is a work on which Annihilator, foregrounding complex, sharp riffs, powerfully returns to the taut tension particular to thrash metal. Following the previous Carnival Diablos, Joe Comeau handled the vocals. Jeff Waters’s guitar moves precisely down to every single note yet never leaves the songs behind, powerfully supporting both aggression and sure hooks at once. From the overwhelming speed of the opener “Ultra-Motion” and the aggression of “Striker” to cuts like “My Precious Lunatic Asylum,” “Prime-Time Killing” and “The Blackest Day,” short, sharp songs pile up one after another. The roughness of the vocals and the blazing acceleration of the rhythm sharply set the whole work on fire. One of the works representative of early-2000s Annihilator, binding outstanding technique and bare violence at extremely high density. A back-to-origin, sharp thrash sound fills the whole. Letting you fully savor both technique and aggression, it is a powerful, fulfilling technical-thrash work — a tension-filled record.