The first thing that struck me about this new ANNIHILATOR record is the high level of aggression. "Waking The Fury" is probably the heaviest album in their career ever. Being the little wimp that I am I first didn’t like this development at all and started to search for non-ANNIHILATOR elements to find out why I had problems with this one. Some elements of Nu Thrash appeared to penetrate my ears as many songs are less melodic than one would expect from the band. Furthermore, Joe Comeau seems to have found an identity of his own, namely aggression (except for some moments when he sounds a bit like Halford). But the more I listened to "Waking…", the more I located typical ANNIHILATOR trademarks and therefore came accustomed to the new material little by little. Jeff’s solos are still 100% Waters although I think he listened a lot to SLAYER recently. Like on "Carnival Diablos", there is one hard rockin’ track on here, though, but this time it doesn’t sound that much like AC/DC. By now I’m quite sure that most of their fans will like this CD as well, even though it doesn’t quite reach their classics. One thing is for sure: I’m definitely looking forward to hear the new stuff live! Speed and aggression, a deadly obsession…