If there's a band I learned to respect and have some care in receiving a new album from it is from the legendary quartet ANNIHILLATOR, because the experience showed me that they can release something musically incredible, an album that is able to be better that some Thrash Metal legends, to beat bands as MEGADETH, SLAYER or TESTAMENT, because they are talented and have some classics as "Alice in Hell", "Never, Never Land" and many others. But there are some nasty and albums that don't honor the band's name. And here we have their new release, "Triple Threat".

To be honest, this double CD is a strange kind of compilation, being the first CD "Live at the Bang Your Head Festival", recorded on the festival of the same name on 2016. CD 2 is really strange, an acoustic album called "Un-plugged: The Watersound Studios Sessions".

Let's talk about the album part by part.

First, talking about the live album, we can say that CD "Live at the Bang Your Head Festival" is really good, showing the energy of the band as we usually know from the past. With recordings done by Arne Lakenmacher, and Jeff Waters once more took the jobs of mixing and mastering the album, the sonority is what we all know: that energetic and technical form of aggressive Thrash Metal. But the sound quality could be a little better in some parts, because the drums parts seems a bit strange to me, especially the snare drum.

And of course, some songs are classics of their live shows, as "King of the Kill", the hymns "Set the World on Fire", "Never, Neverland" and "Alison Hell", "Welcome to Your Death" and "Phantasmagoria". But new and excellent songs as "No Way Out" (from "Feast") and "Creepin' Again" (from the last studio album, "Suicide Society") are here as well. But to a band with many excellent albums, some classics aren't presented on the album, as "Battered". But it isn't a bad live experience at all. Maybe if they released as a two live CD package, this problem could be solved. And for this show, Rich Hinks played all the bass parts, and Fabio Alessandrini is the drummer, and both of them are really playing finely.

The second CD is a total new experience. As I said above, "Un-plugged: The Watersound Studios Sessions" is an acoustic album, and it is really amazing, besides could sound a bit strange for Metal fans to deal with this format for a Thrash Metal band. Again, the recordings sessions were done by Arne Lakenmacher, and Jeff Waters made the mixing and the mastering this CD. And they really did an excellent work, because the sound quality is truly amazing, clear as it must be, to hear and understand what the acoustic instruments are doing.

The versions for "Sounds Good to Me", "Innocent Eyes", "Snakes in the Grass" (what a lovely arrangement on the guitars is presented here), "In the Blood" and "Phoenix Rising" are really excellent. But the acoustic version for "Stonewall" is really something that astonished me a lot, because I never could think that this old classic of them would fit so perfectly in this format. I know that they did the two parts without repeating songs, but I truly became curious to hear acoustic versions for "Set the World on Fire", "Alison Hell" and "Battered". Maybe on the future, who knows, they can do such a thing. Once more, Rich Hinks played all the bass parts on the acoustic songs, but the percussions were played by Marc LeFrance. Both did some additional vocals as well, and some acoustic guitars and more additional vocals were recorded by Pat Robillard.

Well, for those who are used to ANNIHILATOR need for musical experiments, "Triple Threat" is a very good album. But for those radicals, I really think you will stay tuned just on the live album...