I have disliked Annihilator for 18 years

I remember it like it was yesterday. The year was 1990, the place was the "heavy metal" section of the cassettes at Camelot Music in the Everett Mall. I was trying to decide which tape to spend my hard-earned money on. In one had I had Sodom's "Agent Orange," and in the other I had Annihilator's "Alice In Hell." I had never heard either one, but both bands had cool logos that I felt like they could be good. It was a toss up until I looked at the picture of Annihilator and Jeff Waters was wearing Oakley wraparound sunglasses and I was like "Wow, that guy is a huge faggot just like Kerry King and his stupid sunglasses, fuck these guys," and bought the Sodom tape. And thank Christ, imagine how pissed I would have been if I had bought "Alice In Hell" instead.

Much like Overkill and Meliah Rage, Annihilator are a great example of when quality control becomes an issue in the heavy metal factory. Someone should have hired a Six Sigma consultant or something, because these bands should never have happened in the first place.

It's not just their music that makes them so terrible. Their cover art is also so dumb that I want to fall on a sword just to make it go away. After 20 years, they're still using that terrible airbrush and oil style that bands like Uncle Slam ran into the ground. There's always some kind of "mindblowing" concept and I can just imagine Jeff Waters going over to the artist's house and passionately sketching his idea out on the back of an issue of Kerrang from 1992: "OK, so it's like this girl... and she's in this spooky mansion... and surrounded by dolls. But they're evil dolls! I know this girl that works at the Applebee's down the street that would probably model for it."

If all this wasn't enough to prove that Annihilator are an awful band, you should know that Dave Mustaine loves them. Here is a testimonial from him on the latest Annihilator album. Please note that his poor son is named "Justis."

"I listen to Jeff's new Annihilator cd 'Metal' in my car while zipping my son, Justis, off to high-school each morning. He puts it in the cd player and shows me all his favorite spots; it makes me proud that he digs good metal!"
Dave Mustaine

However, I do have to give credit where it's due. Jeff Waters recently cut his hair, and it turns out that he looks a lot like Matthew Fox from Lost and Party of Five.