There aren’t enough rubbish bands these days.
Perhaps it’s the higher quality of home-recording techniques, the greater amount of competition or simply a product of my perception, but there seem to be fewer genuinely terrible bands and albums available now than there were ten or fifteen years ago. This seems like an odd thing to complain about, until you realise that fewer rubbish bands doesn’t mean more good ones, it means more mediocre ones. Average is the new bad, and it’s far, far worse than rubbish ever was.
Annihilated play the kind of groove-driven “brutal” Death Metal that was popular in the late 90’s/early 2000’s, and you can’t point to anything specifically bad about it. The playing is competent, song-writing is effective if unspectacular and the production is as crunchy as one would expect. The band has a decent enough sense of rhythm, with guttural vocals and effectively deployed samples and… you get the idea. Annihilated are the kind of band who seem to be happy making up the numbers, adding one to the tally of identical Death Metal bands that have nothing particular to offer.
Bottom line, there is nothing about this album that hasn’t been done better before over a decade ago. If it were genuinely bad there’d at least be some pleasure to be had in pointing that out, but even that isn’t an option. I can’t in good conscience attack XIII Steps To Ruination (Unique Leader), but nor can I recommend it to anyone who knows the first thing about this style
4.5/10
RICHIE HR