ANNIHILATOR Mainman Jeff Waters -

ANNIHILATOR Mainman Jeff Waters - " I Like The Scene Now, It's Fantastic"

Shaq from Metal-rules.com spoke to ANNIHILATOR mainman Jeff Waters recently about a number of topics including Roadrunner Records, the internet, the old days, the current state of metal, and a more. Here are a few excerpts from the chat:

www.Metal-rules.com: What are your thoughts on the metal in North America now. Do you feel that things are starting to improve enough to allow the band to have some success at home?
Waters: "As a metal fan, which essentially is what I am, who happens to play guitar and have a band, since about 2002 or 2003 has been on the upswing and now it's kicking in. There's a lot of great bands out there and they're not the same as the bands that I listened to. Usually when I want to listen to some metal I listen to some older stuff - the earlier SLAYER, AC/DC, PRIEST, EXODUS. The stuff I grew up on is still the stuff I like to listen to when I have the time. The new sort of generation like BODOM and LAMB OF GOD, all the the different forms of metal that is coming out now is certainly different than in the year 2000 and in the 90's when that kind of 80's inspired metal was pretty much gone. I like the scene now, it's fantastic. I can go to the record store and actually find a bunch of bands that I like and find more than one good song on every CD now. There is a choice, and with the internet you have even more choice. If you want to just check the songs out to make sure you can find them on the net instead of wasting your hard earned money on a band that writes one good song every album and does a good video for it and then you buy the CD and the rest of it is crap. This way it's great, it weeds out the bad stuff from the good stuff."

www.Metal-rules.com: Touching on that, do you feel that internet downloading has hurt Annihilator at all?
Waters: "It's hurt everyone, it's got two sides to it and you've just got to deal with it. I could say something negative but I'm guilty too. When I check out bands and go on the internet, it's perfect for me because I can decide what I want to pay for. I won't download stuff and not pay for it; I want to go out to the store and have the CD and the booklet and all that but I also don't want to get burned like I did in the 90's. I'd see something in a video on one of those rare metal shows and see a cool video from a band, buy the CD and the rest of it is horrible. I'd feel ripped off and not want to play it again. Obviously it's hurt people but it's also an amazing promotion tool. It's done nothing but help me immensely and it's kept my name in there even if I haven't been there to play. It's great promotion for young bands and I wish I had that opportunity when we were starting out. You can just put a song up on a website and if ten million people want to hear it they can. On the more serious end of that, financially it can be devastating because a lot of bands or labels don't have the finances to do the right job. Labels did not take the internet seriously in the 90's and they're paying for it now. Unfortunately a lot of metal bands pay for it too. It's life, you just gotta deal with it and roll with the punches and keep doing what you love doing no matter what the cost."

www.Metal-rules.com: On a totally different subject, have you ever thought about doing a solo album?
Waters: "I've got a pile of stuff...actually pile doesn't make it sound very pretty, but a load of stuff [laughs] in my studio on my shelf that I just finished a few days ago spending a couple weeks getting all these old master tapes, recordings and rehearsal tapes that were scattered over the years that they don't make machines for anymore. Really, they don't. For some of the masters I was trying to figure out who owns a machine that would fit this kind of tape to find out what it is. I spent about 3 weeks or so dumping all this over to the computer and realized I had about 20 hours of music, which was just shocking but here it is, and it is unused and some of it is really good. I wouldn't mind later on having it out there, putting it on my website for people to have a listen but it's all not Annihilator material. Basically when I write songs I have two shelves, one is for metal and has Annihilator potential, and non-Annihilator."

To read the entire interview head to this location.