2015 appears to be shaping up to be a busy year for the lads in Annihilator, as the follow-up to their 2013 studio offering, Feast, should be finished and delivered. But as the band's long-time leader/songwriter/guitarist Jeff Waters recently told BraveWords correspondent Greg Prato, there will also be several live appearances in the coming months. Read on for the scoop!

BraveWords: What is Annihilator currently up to?

Jeff Waters: "Right now, this second, I'm just about to go down and work on my fourth song that I've written…I haven't even written a fourth song, I’m trying to write a fourth. Three songs out of the way for a new CD. I've been really kind of picky, because even though it's not the most important thing in life, I still have some pressure to come up with an album that's at least as good or better than the last one we did, Feast, because that one really did a lot of good things for us in sales overseas. It really was pretty appreciated - much more appreciated than a lot of the recent ones. So that was an exciting time, touring for a year and a bit. Now I’m back home, trying to get on with the writing, and it's tough. Normally, I'd have an album written by this time with the amount of time I've spent here, but I'm getting pretty picky and I have to take a lot of breaks, because if you get full-time, six days and nights a week, you can completely lose sight of if it's even any good or not. So I'm trying to be working on this fourth song for now four days, and I’m just about to hit 'delete' and throw it in the garbage and start again with something else. [Laughs] In the meantime, we just finished a year and a bit of touring, which was great for us. It was the most we've toured in a long time and the biggest slots at festivals and best reaction. It was a lot of fun. And coming off a really happy time. Next is finishing up this record and then in between, we're go to play a show with Doro for one of her anniversary concerts she does - she's doing one in New York City on the 20th of October, and I'm going to play a couple of cool songs with her. And then the day I get back, my band is in here on the 21st of October, we're rehearsing for a Mexico City show. Which is good - we haven't played in Mexico since 1990. We're doing a show with Korn and Kiss and Limp Bizkit, which sounds like an interesting bill. It's got Obituary on there too and a couple of good, heavy bands - Overkill. It's kind of a real diverse bill, so it will be a lot of fun to get ready for and do. A quick in and out for that one, and then come back, work on the record, and then we've got a show outside of Managua, Nicaragua, which is a first for us, in December. Then it's holidays and 70,000 Tons of Metal Boat Cruise out of Fort Lauderdale, going to Jamaica. One of the original big metal cruises. I think there are 4/5/6,000 people on this boat. They've got 60 bands that are going to be there, and Annihilator is going to play a few shows there, and also I'm hosting an all-star jam and getting all these cool musicians together, like Michael Schenker, to do a couple hour set of half thought-out/rehearsed jams. And then back to doing the record and back to doing summer festivals next summer, and we're hoping to put our 15th studio record out by May/June/July."

 

 

BraveWords: Are there any song titles yet?

Jeff Waters: "No, what I do basically is between records, when I'm watching TV or something, and there's some cool series on TV, I'll hear a title and just jot it down, and end up with like 30 or 40 of these things. Some of them are just cheesy, and then I get friends and my fiancé and do a poll - I send it out by email to people, and say, 'Please send me back the ones you like, and leave off the ones you don't.' And this without lyrics, just titles. Get the music done, and then at the end of that, make a demo of each song of the music, and then I sit down and see if the title seems to fit the music. And then you go, 'OK, what the hell am I going to write this about?' And then I give some to my singer (Dave Padden), if he wants to write lyrics sometimes, sometimes he doesn't - he's too busy or he doesn't want to. So I'll save a few for him and when he's finished recording for the day, he goes back to my parents' house four doors down, where he stays, and I force him to write some lyrics down there." [Laughs]

BraveWords: As far as musically, are there any past Annihilator albums that you would compare the new material to?

Jeff Waters: "Um…hmm. I'm not far enough into it, but the three songs that I just did; it's just drawing from all the different influences I have. You don’t know until it's done, and then even then you really even then know, when the label or the tour agents or the fans or the press start picking stuff out, and you're like, 'Oh yeah…that's what it sounds like!' One of the three songs, for example, I just got a new car a few months ago and it has a nice stereo in it. The first thing I did was I downloaded Master Of Puppets, and cranked 'Damage Inc.,' the last song on the record on Master Of Puppets. And of course, I know that song - I've probably listened to it five billion times, but I hadn't heard it for a bunch of years. And I put that song on, and driving around in a fast car, listening to that song about four, five, or six times in a row, you get out of your car in the driveway, you go in, make a coffee, you turn everything on, and you're a fan, so you just sit there and blast away with that similar kind of beat and that kind of energy. You'll never get it as good as Metallica, but one song on there is very influenced by that."