ANNIHILATOR
Questions asked by Jon Wilde, added to Rock Realms 9th April 2010.
Annihilator is a long term favourite of us here at Rock Realms. We still rate debut album Alice In Hell as one of the finest of its generation.
With a new, self-titled album on the way out, we thought it only fair to catch up with founder member and guitar deity Jeff Waters for a little chat in the UK Earache office...
As we start, I've told Jeff I'll make the interview as quick as possible. This is his response...
Jeff: You're going to find out something in a few seconds. I actually don't stop talking and you're going to have to end this, not me. So at least you don't have to fight to get more than a yes or no (laughs).
Why was the time finally right for a self-titled album?
Jeff: Because...
Because?
Jeff: Next! Nah, just kidding (laughs). During the year and a half cycles in which we put out records, which you probably wouldn't know if you're from the UK mostly - unless you search the internet. We've had a very good following for twenty years but, unfortunately in Scandinavia and the UK we just haven't been album to keep that level of attention.
Really? Scandinavia?
Jeff: No, of all places. Those are the two areas we just haven't cracked. You know, we'll go play the Czech Republic - I'm boasting right now - thirty thousand people when we headline a festival. We try to get a gig in Stockholm we can't get on, or we have to go supporting Trivium or someone to get into the UK. Maybe I made somebody very angry in the early days? Somebody's girlfriend... I don't even know what the question was again...?
Self titled...
Jeff: Right, self-titled. So it's our thirteenth studio CD. During the year I just jot down song titles if I hear anything on the news or read something in a newspaper...or somebody says something interesting I'll write it down...and I won't actually revisit it until it's time to put lyrics to finished music. But, all the titles I wrote down and cool album titles I thought I was coming up with - which weren't that cool - I crossed them all off the list, and then I finally found a great title for it and a movie just came out with that title a few weeks later.
Then the same thing would happen. I'd find a better title, look in a metal mag and find out this band just released an album called the exact same thing. So my partner just said, "You know, it's your thirteenth album. Be honest; is this an album that's really special to you compared to a lot of the other ones you've been doing lately? Do you have a gut feeling this is a special record."
I said, "Yeah, I don't know what it is, but there's something about this that just sounds better." The singer Dave is completely finally not the new guy after eight years and four records he's finally an actual member of the band. The two of us are actually band members.
He's your longest singer isn't he?
Jeff: Yeah, eight years in my band that's a record I can tell ya! But, yeah, and he's a friend too. It's also the thirteenth studio record which I guess you could say is superstitious? I was born February 13th 1966 at 1 o'clock which is thirteen-hundred hours. The whole thing came together...so then my partner said, "You've got to call it Annihilator, because you're at the right place with the singer right now, your album is going to be looked at as the best thing you've done in fifteen years..." - which is cool because we've been around for a lot longer than fifteen years. So it's not like we're saying it's the best thing ever. I think the best album I ever did, and I'll probably never surpass is 'Never, Neverland'. That was in 1990 and it was our biggest selling record release with Roadrunner. I'm never going to say I'm going to do something better than that because it's just silly. It's like AC/DC saying we're going to top Back In Black. They can't do it.
So what we're going to do is do the best that we can do right now. There's something special about it. It's got the first cover we're ever had that hasn't got out logo on it. It's twenty years since our first album Alice In Hell and for some reason I had this silly dream about this ghostly girl. So I thought, you know what, we can put this Alice character on the front cover then she's dead, gone. see ya, done. Twenty years, put her to rest.
That leads me on to a question about the album cover, which is the face with the band name carved into her forehead. Is that all to do with saying goodbye and moving onto a new chapter?
Jeff: That's the way we realised it when it was finished. When we saw it we said to the artist, "That's fantastic, done!" Initially it was just, he was a fan of Alice In Hell, Never, Neverland and King Of The Kill, and there was that kind of fantasy dreamy feel in some of the music and the lyrics, so he'd always said, "Jeff, you've got to keep doing this Alice In Hell thing!" and I'm like, "No, I'm sick of it, forget it!" But he threw it in there anyway, maybe with Alice as a ghost. He just drew it up, carved it into her head, and after it was done we thought it was great. It ties into the old stuff and also says goodbye to the old stuff too.
Twenty years, it's pretty good. It think, to hit this long and still in certain parts of the world to have a big following, and to not have packed it in for ten years and only come back now there's the resurgence of metal...to not have been one of the bands that gave up. I can at least die knowing that what I was doing was honest. legit, I worked hard, and I did what I like doing. It doesn't matter whether it was successful or not. But I think it's cool that we're at twenty years. Not bad, without being a massive band, right?
I don't know about that. You're massive to some people...
Jeff: Yeah, that's correct,,, My mother...
Does she like you music then?
Jeff: No... (laughs)
Your last album had, er, everyone in metal guesting on it. Were you not tempted to do anything like that again this time?
Jeff: In hindsight, I am able to go back and rate my records afterwards. Not a day after, a week after, way down the road... I've gone way past this ego thing where I actually think everything I create is the best and all that shit. I always rate 'em and I gave that like 6.9 out of 10 maximum. Having those guests on there actually saved my ass. I tried on the record, I tried to do well, but it was just one of those times when the magic was not there, you know? I put some good songs on and a lot of people liked the record but, well, maybe I couldn't have done better? Maybe that's the whole point. Maybe that was the best I could do at that time. especially after doing the album we just did there's such a difference, it makes me not like the last one as much because I know the new one is so much better to me. It's funny, I know there are a lot of people who like that Metal album and I'm not trying to step on them...
It's a personal thing.
Jeff: It's personal, yeah, and a song or an album I love and think is the best thing since sliced bread...you could then have the press and fans turn round and tell you it's the worst thing you ever did. But having the guests on there was the luckiest thing. Corey from Trivium said, "Hey, can I play a solo on it?" and I thought it would be great having someone who was a real metal head and a really good guitar player, who knows metal and is only, what, 20 or whatever, to actually play on my record. The next day my partner suggests I call Alexi from Children of Bodom, Willie from Lamb of God, (Jeff) Loomis from Nevermore; people I've known over the years who have said they have been a little bit influenced by what I've been doing.
That saved my ass in my opinion because I don't think the record was amazing. It was a good album, maybe, but it was neat to have all these people on there. It was an honour for me and apparently an honour for them.
Is there no one guesting on the new one?
Jeff: No. I say no, there's no one guesting, but there are always a couple of guys who sing back-up vocals. I keep forgetting, because they are my friends - I don't see them as 'musicians', they come over to dinner and all that. One guy who has been singing the back-ups on the last bunch of albums is, I don't know if you've heard of them but there was a band called Exciter. They're still around, but the 80s Exciter was a singing drummer, a bass player and a guitar player...and the three of them, plus Anvil and Razor - those are three bands from Canada that actually influenced Metallica and all the other bands we all know of. Through bad management, not taking care of business, through crappy deals and all that stuff they've never had success that would keep them around...other than Anvil having a movie out of course.
But...the original Exciter...the first three albums were ground breaking and influential...Dan Beehler, my buddy, he's been singing on the last, well, lots of albums, all the back-ups and stuff. Which is really awesome.
And you just forget who he is...
Jeff: Yeah, I forget. It's weird because some people hit me up and say, "Holy shit, Dan Beehler, you know him?!" And he actually gets the same about me. We both kind of just laugh because we do this for a living, but also it's a hobby - in the sense of having a hobby that's a job that pays - but I just do this because it's my life and it's fun. It takes things like that to realise you've just cooked dinner for Dan Beehler from 'Pounding Metal' and 'Heavy Metal Maniac', you know, the roots of metal!
On the new record you've got you and (singer) Dave. Is there anyone else, or is it just session musicians?
Jeff: Only the two of us since, whatever it is, 2003. Other than that, it's a hired drummer. We don't even think about the touring line-up. I hire the drummer to come in, I play all the bass, so there's only ever really 3 guys involved in the record intensively, and that's me, Dave does the vocals and writes a couple of the songs, and then we always hire a drummer. And that's cool because we always get to work with some of the coolest metal drummers around - Mike Mangini, Randy Black.
Mike Mangini is Neal Peart's favourite drummer...and he's been on about three or four of my records. We've worked with Randy Black a few times. He's in a band that's not huge, but they've got a respected name: Primal Fear from Germany. He's one of those guys, I don't know if he's a bad salesman or what it is. He should be one of the most famous drummers in the worlds but he's not. He's one of the best drummers in metal. I got to work with Ray Hartmann, one of the original Annihilator guys...
Yeah, so I'm lucky. Because I don't have a band where you have to use the same guy all the time - Other than Dave - you get to have who you want. You know, I almost had Joey Jordison. He was going to do the Metal record, but he got called up for the Ministry tour. Which reminds me, I should think about him for my next record. He's an amazing drummer. Paul Bostaph would be awesome, or Lombardo, that would be amazing too. It's nice to pick and choose! All I have to do is write a cheque... (laughs)
Why have you never had a long term line-up? Is it a control thing?
Jeff: A stable line-up? When I started in '84/'85, what happened was I was a teenager, and my friend John Bates and I - he was the co-writer for lyrics from Alison Hell, King Of The Kill, all the way through until recently - he was lead singer with the band back in the demo days in the basement... Him and two of the other people in the band, it was a time when there were a lot of strip clubs and a lot of metal bars - we're talking zillions of them - and a lot of guys just wanted to go and party and look like rock stars but not do the actual work of sitting at home and learning how to do it like the real guys do it. These guys were fantastic and could have been amazing musicians, but they didn't want to do that. they wanted to go out and party with their girlfriends.
I thought, if I do the real work to write this stuff, maybe we'll get a record deal, and maybe we'll get real girlfriends. You know, I'm talking anywhere in the world and maybe we'll be rock stars and get a car... I had these fantasies and dreams about how the business was. So they just didn't want to show up at practice. I'd done a demo with these guys, they'd fucked off and that was the end of that. So I thought maybe I'll do a demo where I play bass, all the guitars. I'll write the lyrics, I'll sing on it even though I'm not a good singer, do the drums and write the drum parts, learn how to use a 4-track cassette player - so you're actually learning how to engineer, produce and mix without realising.
So all these labels - MCA, Metalblade - everybody was interested off the demos and I was in shock. I still wasn't clued in that I was getting offers for record deals. Roadrunner came along, and Monte Conner; we were his first signing. And that was of course the best thing that could have ever happened. We were at Roadrunner for three albums, off to Sony from there, and for every album we did they tell us to find a singer, find a drummer. So I would go find these guys.
By the time we went on a tour I was trying to keep the singer Randy Rampage healthy enough to do it. He was into a lot of drugs and booze. He was in a famous punk band from Canada called DOA, he was the bass player. He was singing for us, partying day and night, and of course you can't go on a tour and last long doing that. We did a tour with Testament and he was done, he left. It wasn't me firing him, he just couldn't do it. And then I learned a lesson, maybe I'd better not hire someone who's doing that kind of stuff.
Then the next record happened and it was the same bloody thing. I wrote all the music, wrote the drum parts and had a drummer come in and do them. While the record company was scrambling to make it look like a band it was actually a solo project, just because I was the driving force who wanted to do this. So I was put in that situation where I wanted a band but, If I wanted anything to happen for me, I had to do it myself. Thus, I've produced every single Annihilator record, engineered almost all of them. I realised if you can't fight it just go with it. It's a Water's-run solo project in the background. On tour it's a band.
Then that changed eight years ago. Dave Padden joined the band and somehow worked his way from a new singer to an experienced singer to finally becoming a good front man playing guitar at the same time - doing the James Hetfield style, playing Water's guitar parts whilst he's trying to sing a song, and looking like he's got some experience as a front man. It didn't work that way seven years ago. He was the new guy and fans weren't sure, and bang, now Dave Padden and Jeff Water's makes Annihilator.
So in another twenty years you might have a full band?
Jeff: Thirty? (laughs) Nah, it's the Dave and Jeff band now.
Maybe you should change the name...
Jeff: Hmm...the Dave and Jeff comedy hour... (laughs)
When you write an album...are you writing songs all the time or do you sit down to write an album as a whole?
Jeff: When you take care of business too it doesn't give you a lot of time to sit down with a guitar. I'm finally at the stage now where the business end is going on guitar clinics, for Gibson and Epiphone presenting a new guitar, the signature line of Flying Vs I have coming out...which is an amazing honour. I'm also getting ready to play, so now I have to practice. And Hughes & Kettner amplifiers - they have an amp called the Coreblade that I'm promoting - I have to play some shows for that too. Fortunately I'm now at the stage where the business side is making me practice guitar, but when I record the record I've done my guitar parts, that's it. There's almost six months of not even touching a guitar.
Really?!
Jeff: It's good too, because if you listen to our new record the playing sure is physical. You sweat when you play this stuff. You don't have to move. You can sit in a chair and after twenty minutes you're drenched in sweat. If you did that for twenty five years, you'd have arthritis and you'd be finished, so I have to take those mandatory breaks. Oh, and eat lots of pizza. That's good! (laughs)
So, you've got something like sixty-six solos on the new record...?
Jeff: That's not my count. I would never count my own bloody solos! (laughs) That was the label manager at Earache. The guys set me up to take some shots with that 'sixty-six solo thing'.
We are going to want sixty-seven on the next one...
Jeff: I'll put one on the next album. No, there are a lot of solos on there. Dan (Earache) pointed that out to me six or eight weeks ago...which is cool because I've never had a label person give enough of a shit to count something like that! I can honestly say they are not sixty-six shitty solos. They're not too bad...
When you do your solos etc. on the recording, are you a playing perfectionist or do you put it together in ProTools?
Jeff: You know it's different. Sometimes, If I'm at a stage where I've been playing for a week or two and I'm in full-on studio mode and I get a feel going, I'll let it roll and I'll do a solo and get it. But maybe there's one really horrible note here so I'll go and fix that note. Other times I'll go and do fifteen solos, not trying to keep each fifteen...but I'll end up building a solo, adding to it on each loop round. If I'm really lazy, or I just cannot come up with an idea, I'll piece it together - I'll literally do ten solos and cut it, put it in and join it. If I can I'll then go back through, learn and play it again I will. Sometimes, though, it's like "Uh-oh" and I'll never be able to do it again.
You know, Van Halen and Angus Young are good examples. A lot of people thought in the '80s, when I was growing up, that Angus was nothing more than a guy in a little kid's school uniform running around burning energy and being an entertainer...but couldn't play guitar. That was the most ridiculous opposite thing ever said, because his solos were blues - BB King, Chuck Berry and all that. His solos were such amazing blues guitar playing with energy. Anybody can say they can play Angus, but I'll bet you nobody can. The real players out there know you cannot duplicate Van Halen. Anybody can do hammer ons, learn his notes in a tab book or whatever, but you'll never be able to capture the same feeling. And even if you are one of the few who can capture it, you're just copying someone who already did it thirty years ago.
So there are some solos I could never do again so I'll just leave them and fix the last shitty note. ProTools is great because... I don't use ProTools... I didn't say ProTools is great... Cubase is great! For vocals, I get Dave Padden to go over the verse with me. When I think he's got it, I hit the space bar to start the recording loop, run upstairs to have a coffee, have a doughnut or whatever, and when he's done in maybe ten passes or whatever he's comfortable with, he hits the space bar again, comes up, grabs a coffee...then I go down and pick the best pieces of his singing and throw it in. It's so efficient, relaxing and creative.
It's presumably a lot easier than when you started with track recorders?
Jeff: Yeah, you had to spend six hours and now you can do the same thing in half an hour. But, of course, it can be abused. Where it can be abused is when people are not good musicians. They fuck with it so much that they could never reproduce it and then you see them live and it's horrendous. That's a lot of younger bands unfortunately. The labels will sit there knowing they have a good looking band - earrings, tattoos, black dyed hair job. They're on the covers, posters, great photographers involved. They throw a producer at the band. The band just does what they're told to do and they're the next big thing for a few years.
A lot of those bands have a lot of talent, but a lot of them don't and what you're hearing is Auto-Tune and Melodyne, fixing up the vocals with things that no one could ever do.
Is there any concept behind the new album, or is it all standalone songs?
Jeff: Standalone songs. Some important lyrically, some not. Life, observations, personal things, things that happen to friends, things on the news, you know...
You don't look for inspiration in just one place?
Jeff: In the early days it was all about psychological disorders, fantasy and dreams, but now it's all just life.
Your cover of Romeo Delight, the Van Halen track... Why that song?
Jeff: It's was 1980 when their 3rd album Women And Children First came out. And of course Back In Black came out that year. I know Black Sabbath were out but I hadn't really gotten into them at that time. I know there was some early Judas Priest stuff that had a very heavy vibe to it, but I was into Kiss, AC/DC... The Van Halen stuff came out and I started listening a little bit. Then I heard Women And Children First, and the song Romeo Delight. That to me was the first time I'd really heard something heavy. Now you look back it was just David Lee Roth with a bottle of Jack Daniels, you know, just a party song. But, at the time, that was a fucking heavy tune. You turned that up back then, it was the same feeling I got years later at a Slayer concert where you just want to punch someone, or hit a wall to get out that teenage hormone aggression. That's what you do when you're a teenager. That music - Slayer, Metallica - that got it out of your system. Instead of going and committing crimes, doing terrible things, you're just getting it out in the music and going back to normal life again.
That Romeo Delight song was around before those bands so this was my first taste of heavy music and it just led me into the open arms of Slayer, Metallica, Venom and all that.
So the song does have real meaning to you...it's not just a case of "I like Van Halen, I'm going to pick a song"...
Jeff: No, I like a lot of their stuff. But this one was sentimental. When they were doing their reunion tour, in 2005 was when I started getting back into them. That was just the tune I wanted to crank when I was doing e-mails and business.
Is there any other song lurking in the background you might cover one day?
Jeff: Nah, I've probably had it with covers now. Ironically, a lot of Van Halen's biggest hits were cover songs.
Any stand out moments on the new album, or is that like picking your favourite kid?
Jeff: There's two songs I like. One's called 'The Trend' - because of the guitar playing. It's got old-school guitar stuff. When you hear it you go "Eighties!" right away. It's got the Van Halen Phase 90 pedal on it. It progresses into total '80s guitar stuff with no vocals for at least two or three minutes, and then Dave comes in and it kind of thrashes it up a bit. It's a very long song with a lot of melody. I just wanted to say 'fuck you' in my own way. If I want to play a three minute instrumental part I will...
The song 'Betrayed' is fun to play live. It's like a Slayer/Testament/Annihilator cross.
You've made mention of doing touring. Is anything set in stone yet? Are you going to do a big tour?
Jeff: We've got some summer festivals coming up in Europe. Not a ton, but we've got some going on. I think in September we start the real touring.
You've got the band sorted out?
Jeff: We just confirmed that on the website today. A little picture on there...
Only one more question now...or thereabouts. What's the best thing you've read about yourself in the press over the years?
Jeff: I think the Hitler, dictator, asshole thing is always fun to read. You make it clear this (Annihilator) is a solo project, but the perception sometimes journalists would get is, "Ooh, he must be a total asshole; he's got all these band changes and can't keep a band together!" It's like, no. I'm not trying to keep a band together...
Anything else you'd like to mention about the new album or your endorsements?
Jeff: No, I don't want to mention that. I want it all to come to me. I don't want to do the work. I deserve this, I deserve that! (laughs) Nah, I just hope to be back in September playing. So, I really hope to see you and everyone else then!
Thanks again to Jeff for his time. You can check out the Rock Realms review of Annihilator's latest self-titled album here.
http://www.annihilatormetal.com/
http://www.myspace.com/annihilatorofficial
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Annihilator/9614139730
