Jeff Waters – Annihilator stands out as an incredibly unique band!

By: Robert Cavuoto

Canadian metal legends, Annihilator, have just released their 14^th studio CD simply titled Feast. The group’s latest album features nine new tracks that will kick your ass, plus a 15-song bonus CD with the deluxe ECO-book.

Jeff Waters [guitarist], Dave Padden [vocals/guitar], Mike Harshaw [drums], and Alberto Campuzano [bass] tear through Feast with honest, raw power and energy.

Drill into this album and dig the excellent technical skills, giving the metal world the most-tasteful mixtures metal riffs and legendary shredding.

That’s why Jeff and Annihilator have been a major influence on countless well-known metal acts and musicians around the world.

I had a chance to catch with Canadian guitar legend Jeff Waters to talk about Feast, and about securing Annihilator’s place within Thrash Metal history!

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Robert Cavuoto: Can you tell me how this CD differs from your 2007 release, Metal, or 2010 self-titled release?

Jeff Waters: I think that most of the Annihilator records are different for tons of reasons. As artists you get some really good stuff and other times you don’t. You just don’t realize it. If you lose the ego a bit and look back honestly, you realize that ooh, maybe I should have written a better song.

Then we have had different drummers and singers. That seems to alter the sound and sometimes the styles, but it’s kind of what we are, heavy metal meets thrash. And amongst the heavy metal genre of the ‘80s when you had everything from love songs to angry songs, to melodic songs and you mix it with some Slayer and Exodus and thrash, you’ve got Annihilator.

Our last record in 2010 didn’t include any instrumental parts or ballads or any of the melodic things that I usually put on the records.

Our singer, Dave Padden, didn’t like one or two of ballady songs I was writing. There’s no point getting your singer to sing something if he’s not into it, otherwise, you totally screw that up. So, I just left a couple of those tunes off and what you’re left with is more of a heavy thrash album. It’s not totally what we are, but we’re a big part of it.

Looking back on the very first record, Alice in Hell, the first song, “Crystal Ann,” was a classical guitar piece and it was supposed to be a thrash album. The second song on the album, which was the song that launched us, was not a thrash song. It was full of melody, and slow.

Sometimes you get little funky parts and bluesy solos. Sometimes we get thrash; sometimes we get some punk-type songs, and silly songs about food – “Kraft Dinner” and “Chicken and Corn.” The next thing we’re doing an angry Slayer wannabe kind of aggression. The next one we’re doing traditional heavy metal. It just varies. And it’s not planned, it’s not like let’s just do a heavy album. It never works like that for us.

Robert: How do you rate Feast compared to your other CDs?

Jeff Waters: My favorite albums are: Never, Neverland from 1990 and King of the Kill, from 1994. That one was never released in North America, but was a massive album in Asia, Japan and Europe. The tour for that record was just ridiculous and beyond my dreams. I was singing on the album, so it was even more of an unexpected thing as I’m not really a singer.

So, to have me sing, play guitar and sell more records than I’ve ever sold, was just stupid luck.

Then Schizo Deluxe, from 2005, it was a very underexposed record. The label president at the time died in a car accident before the release of the record, it meant that the label temporarily stopped. That was a really shitty time for the label and his family. I wish everybody had heard that album. I think it’s coming out as a re-release next month with the new label. And then the fourth one would be the newest one – Feast.

Robert: Are there any songs that you’re looking forward to playing live off Feast?

Jeff Waters: I think the first three songs on the record that we came up with are the ones we will choose to play live; “Deadlock”, “No Way Out” and “Smear Campaign”

Robert: Are you content with the public’s perception of Annihilator’s place within Thrash Metal’s history?

Jeff Waters: I never gave a shit about image or what I looked like. Things like that were important to a lot of bands. It sounds stupid and defiant, but it’s just that I never cared about it. I just play my music, and we were lucky enough to have things going so well that we didn’t have to care about that kind of thing. We intentionally and unintentionally dropped out of our own country and the United States in 1993, at a time when traditional heavy metal in the ‘80s and thrash metal was literally dropped by their labels. That was back in the grunge era.

Unless you were Pantera, Biohazard or Sepultura, or along those lines, you were done. There was nobody who wanted to book you, sign you, or do press for you. Obviously, the bigger ones kept going, but they all downgraded and ducked down in North America. Judas Priest went from playing the stadium in Vancouver to the clubs with Ripper Owens. Slayer was playing arenas, and they went down to playing clubs in Vancouver.

You really had a lot of bands being tested to see if they really had the love of their music. Do you guys want to downgrade and still put records out, or do you want to say fuck it and retire. There’s a good core of these bands, who said fuck this; we’re going to do this and we were one of them. It’s what we love to do. And Slayer were the top guys here that took a big hit for ten years but never stopped, never gave up and just kept going. That’s my favorite band for carrying metal on through to this point.

There’s another group of guys, Testament, Exodus, Overkill that a lot of Americans and Canadians don’t realize that Annihilator are part of that group overseas. We all took a hit; we all were struggling. We all had to fight for deals; we all had ticket sales go down; we all had record sales go down, and we all had big lineup changes and frequent ones. We did not like just bail and quit and say “‘screw it” and get a “real job,” only to reunite 10 – 15 years later when metal was popular again. The bands I mentioned to you were mid-level bands that just went through hell and never stopped. We always released records and always kept touring.

Creator, Destruction, Exodus, Overkill, Testament and Annihilator are having some of our biggest record sales in 15 years. And Testament is just kicking ass around the world right now with their music and touring. So, yeah, it’s a good time.

To answer your question, if I didn’t have the support from Japan, Asia and Europe, all through the ‘90s and 2000s, I wouldn’t have been able to continue and would probably would be a bitter, old man right bitching about the business and what could have been, and what I used to be. I’d probably be really depressed. This is my life, and it’s what I love to do. I’m glad I’m still doing it. It’s also nice to see a lot of the press coming back, or new press discovering us. It’s pretty awesome.

Robert: You alluded to this earlier about having so many member changes. How has that impacted the band over the years?

Jeff Waters: The crazy part about Annihilator is we actually stand out as an incredibly unique band, if you look at our story. It’s basically a solo project, marketed as a band,  who only became a band in the last 10 years with Dave Padden.

Those first four records had four different singers on them, and in different parts of the world, were hugely successful albums. I don’t think any band’s ever had four singers on the first four albums and all four were big-selling records. That’s not really supposed to happen.

I wanted to have a band, but I ended up writing and playing bass on the demos. I said, “I can play it better, so I might as well play it.” I’d write all the guitar parts and most of the vocals, melodies and lyrics. I’d write the drum parts and jump behind the drum kit and show the drummer what I wanted with the song. It became clear to me pretty quickly that “Oh, I guess this isn’t called a band; it’s more like a solo project.” I would hire musicians for the tours, and for the record I would get a singer and I’d hire a drummer. So it was two stages – find a drummer and singer for the record. And then when that was done, I would try to keep the singer for the tour cycle and look for the rest of the band.

It was the weirdest way of running a band and confused the hell out of everybody. When you’re rotating musicians like that, the first thing that comes to mind is what an asshole this guy must be and hard to work with. It was actually the opposite. I loved working with different drummers and bass players. Out of the many musicians we had, I’d only had disputes or problems with three of them. And that was usually due to drugs and alcohol. Sometimes it was my alcohol use that was causing the problems. But generally it’s been a very friendly, fun band that many musicians have emailed me and say, “Hey, can I come on tour with you?”

Robert:  You’ve been producing all your albums. What made you put on the producer hat?

Jeff Waters: Producing is what you envision for the song to sound like and I knew what I wanted.

The problem was in the early days, I didn’t know how to engineer, which is to get the physical sound, setting the mics, working the pre-amps, the compressors and all that stuff. I didn’t realize I was actually learning how to be an engineer by using these little 4-track cassette recording machines in the demo days.

With the first album, it was like, why get a producer? I already know what I want. The key there was I didn’t know about the actual engineering side. The performances, the songs, and the attitudes still came through even with the lack of good production. When the record becomes a hit, they start throwing money at you to do another one, then you start going to better studios. Then I had the opportunity to meet engineers, producers as well as and sit in on sessions with big bands. I would take notes.

A weird story that I don’t think I’ve told almost anyone is Never, Neverland was one of the biggest records we’ve ever had.

I would go to Europe and you go to a shopping mall and get mobbed. Yet, I would be in a studio in Vancouver, Canada, my hometown and I would be getting diet sodas and yogurts for Joe Perry and Steven Tyler of Aerosmith while they were recording. I worked for no money. I would sit in on Queensryche’s Empire or K.D., Lang’s biggest album. I would steal all the secrets and tricks from the engineers and producers. From doing that, I just learned how to engineer.

Robert: What makes you most proud of Annihilator as you look back over your entire career?

Jeff Waters: Surviving this long and having this many records out. I know this may sound cheesy, but fighting the system – as in the music business. Not to fight them to win, but to fight them to survive. It’s a system set up to basically destroy the artist – either drugs, booze, bankruptcy or ripping you off. And I just always thought that was a fun challenge, just see if I could survive and do this. At 47, if I dropped dead tomorrow, I think I’ve beat them. [Laughter]

Robert: And you’ve had a tremendous career.

Jeff Waters: It’s been a lot of fun. Every time I do a record, I have a ritual when I get on a plane to go do press. I sit there and I look out the window as we’re taking off – I say the same bloody thing over and over again for the last 10 years –”Here you go again, Jeff.”

That stupid little phrase really means, you lucky bastard; I can’t believe you’re still getting paid to get on a plane and fly somewhere to talk about another record. So, it’s kind of like you’re just grateful about the whole damn thing.