The Best of Annihilator

The album's packaging will not lie to you, but the cover art will...in a way. The Best Of Annihilator is one of the biggest crocks currently out there.

Let's look at it this way. All the songs from here are from either of their first four Roadrunner Records albums. Alice In Hell, Never, Neverland, Set The World On Fire, and In Command are the four albums that make up this supposed best of that only spans their career on Roadrunner, and nothing else.

Second, look at the track listing. It looks like someone sat in a room and said, "Take this chunk, this chunk, and this chunk, then put two live versions on of whatever songs you want to throw them off." Unfortunately the songs are in direct order from the original CDs they originated from. Not to mention that the first seven tracks, with the exclusion of 'Phantasmagoria', are from a CD (Alice In Hell) that is only nine songs long.

And could it have killed them to atleast hit "random" on a CD player for CD order? All the songs are in order of appearance on the CD they were released on (save for track six and seven, where they are both taken in order of appearance off Bag Of Tricks and In Command and not the CD they originally came off of). This gives you no real pleasure in the CD due to that simple fact that you hear them as though you hear a regular album. The compilation would probably have been better if it were made a split CD of these albums, rather then a Best Of attempt.

And the real laugh is that track six, 'Phantasmagoria', is the rarity version from Bag Of Tricks, which can be ordered through any on-line CD store that sells Annihilator albums, and from many regular CD stores, possibly in your area. So, in reality the song really isn't a rarity. So, do not be fooled there.

But what's worse about this whole ordeal is that it was all done wrong. Had Roadrunner possibly issued this before their Two From The Vault series, maybe more people who never heard of the band would buy it. All four albums covered on this best of failure were re-issued for under $20 each. There is no actual need to release a best of at this point, especially for three or four dollars less then one of their Two From The Vault CDs, except to try to milk money from the "Annihilator" fans that they forgot about as times changed and nu-metal was the in thing.

So, unless you are a die hard "Annihilator" fan who has to have it for collecting's sake, this really isn't worth it. The CD is completely laughable and just horribly put together. You would be better off just buying the first Two From The Vault CD which contained Alice In Hell and Never, Neverland, the two albums that make up the majority of this release, then this compilation. Sure it has some of their best songs, but there's no order, and some of the best songs on the album were left out, as though no one actually listened to the CDs before choosing which tracks to put onto the compilation itself. What a laughable attempt.