ANNIHILATOR

ANNIHILATOR's Jeff Waters: "...It's Really Tough For Us, Because We're An Older Band..."

www.About.com: Heavy Metal's Chad Bower has issued an interview with ANNIHILATOR leader Jeff Waters. The following is an excerpt from the interview:

Q: Metal has been out for nearly a year in Europe. What was the delay in getting a North American release?

A: I’ve been away from the States since 1993. My home country Canada hasn’t seen us tour there since ’93, nor has the US. So we haven’t really had a proper release there. This is more of a proper release, although it’s not going to get us out front and get us in all the magazines there. But SPV will try to get us a little momentum. We’ve had a good following in Europe and Asia since the first record in 1989. The first three records did pretty well in North America, then in 1993 metal went out and we decided stay overseas where we were doing well, and that’s where we’ve been all this time. I’ve tried to get Canadian and US deals for many albums over many years. This is the 12th studio album, and after the third one it was almost impossible because in the ‘90s traditional metal went out. It was only in the underground. No promoters and clubs would book anything with “metal” in it. And now it’s really tough for us, because we an “older” band, and labels would rather sign the newer stuff. We don’t have that guaranteed big sales thing, where overseas we keep getting resigned and getting good deals and doing good tours because we do have the sales over there."

Q: You sang lead vocals on a track on Metal and you were actually the full-time vocalist for Annihilator for a while in the ‘90s. Do you miss being the vocalist?

A: "No. I did it on King Of The Kill (1994), Refresh The Demon (1996) and Remains (1997). I just did it because I couldn’t find anyone around where I was living. Friends of mine conned me into giving it a try. King Of The Kill was a big album everywhere except North America, and we did three videos for the album. I was laughing because I was very insecure as a singer. I’m not really a singer. I just picked it up at the age of 26. But it worked well. Eventually it became too physically demanding. I wanted to concentrate on guitar and we brought back an old singer, Randy Rampage. Once in a while I’ll sing on a record. It’s fun to do, but I’m not great at it and it’s very physically demanding. When we’re doing touring, I do 3 or 4 songs if we’re the opening act, and 6 out of 18 in a headline set."

Read the full interview at this location.