Annihilator songwriter, guitarist and pround Canadian Jeff Waters recently spoke to Greg Prato of Songfacts about a number of topics including: the pros and cons of writing many Annihilator songs by himself, the stories behind several headbanging classics, and how he survived metal's dark mid-late '90s period; an excerpt follows:

Since you write the majority of the songs yourself, you probably make more money as far as publishing and royalties, if you're the only songwriter. Does that come into play at all?

Jeff: "Yeah. Absolutely. That was actually my reasoning for it. Not in the beginning. In the very beginning of Annihilator, for the first bunch of albums, it was just, steer the ship. I had an issue with booze, but I was able to keep on track a lot more than the other guys. There was drugs and booze and girlfriends and partying in the way of a lot of what was going on for the first two albums. I had to take the reins and say, 'Okay, if the bass player can't be here, I'll play the bass. If the singer won't write the lyrics, I'll do it.'

So that was the way it lasted for quite a few years. And then it sunk into the mid-'90s when the metal scene, so to speak, died. I mean, I know it didn't die, but it completely went out in North America. Clubs weren't booking metal bands and radio wasn't playing. Headbangers Ball and Power Hour up here in Canada were getting taken off the air. So it was really tough for any traditional heavy metal bands to continue, and most of us lost deals.

But in that time I was able to still have Japan and Europe enough that I could continue. But I had to build my own recording studio - which is fantastic - and learn a lot about the recording process and do a lot of it myself. The songwriting at that point became a survival thing, too. At that point I was singing for about three albums, so it made sense that I would write everything myself. It was kind of my thing."

What would you say is your favorite Annihilator album, as far as songwriting goes?

Jeff: "Never, Neverland. And I think simply because half of that was leftovers from the first record, called Alice In Hell, that we didn't use. And Alice In Hell, the first one was more of a noisy, messy, thrashy kind of album.

There were a couple of songs on the Never, Neverland album that seemed a little more fun and one called 'Kraf Dinner', about macaroni and cheese. Things like that, that at the time seemed like, 'Oh, that's not serious, I don't want to mess the album up with something fun.' And then we had so much success with the first record I just said, 'Screw it, let's have fun.' So I added a few goofy changes and interesting stuff like that, doing exactly what I wanted."

To read the interview in its entirety, click here.

In live news, on October 25th Annihilator will play Mexico City, Mexico as part of the Hell & Heaven Metal Fest alongside: KISS, Rob Zombie, Venom, Overkill, and many more.

(Jeff Waters photo courtesy of Jonas Rogowski)