Review Summary: Whilst no doubt technical and thrashy, Criteria for a Black Widow is a stale imitation of Annihilator's earlier greatness with more entertaining segments crowded with dull, tired riffs.
Criteria for a Black Widow stands as a return to more traditional thrash and extreme metal for Annihilator, after Jeff Waters played with some industrial and hard rock elements quite unsuccessfully on King of the Kill, Refresh the Demon, and Remains. Superficially it succeeds at the task, with some fairly heavy moments, but it struggles to diversify its riffing and usually suffers from dragging songs as a result.
An obvious point of alarm arises when one compares Bloodbath, Nothing Left, Double Dare, and Schizos (Are Never Alone) (Part III). Simply put, they all open more or less the same way, with very comparable and honestly quite boring opening riffs. When they pick up the pace, the songs generally vastly improve, but the energy-less percussion and rather lacking dynamics in the production sap a lot of the fervor the songs direly needed to sound interesting.
Thankfully, the core strength of Annihilator, Jeff Waters' insane lead work, remains, and spices up songs like Back to The Palace and Double Dare significantly. Precise, technical guitar work honestly saves several songs here from being disposable at best. However, despite its goal as a comeback album, Criteria for a Black Widow fails to provide the energetic songwriting and dynamics it really required to fulfill its goal. As an overall product, it also suffers from songs like the abysmal title track and a worse Powerdrain in disguise as Sonic Homicide. Strong moments like Back to the Palace, Punctured and Loving the Sinner help carry the weight of some of those worse tracks, but it all balances out to a pretty mediocre thrash effort best left avoided in favor of the band's first two albums.
*Re-written 17/09/17*
