For those that blinked and may have missed it, Annihilator frontman/founder Jeff Waters posted a very brief message via Facebook:

"South American tour coming before end of summer! Yes! This will be a big one!"

Stay tuned for details as they become available.

Waters checked in with the following update last week:

"It's for sale now: the Jeff Waters Epiphone Annihilation II (pictured below). It is the perfect metal lead and rhythm guitar for its price range. You can pay more, but why? I use them now in studio and will use them on tour stock. The goal that Epiphone and I set out to achieve was, again, to produce the best low cost/high quality ratio we could get. The end user needs a guitar that is in the middle-price range of quality but can be had for a lower cost. Oops; we did it again!

I hope you rockers and metalheads like this one. I wish I had this option avaliable to me when I was starting out, and judging by the requests we have from established artists and producers in the last weeks, I think the pros are diggin' it, too! METAL!"

Go to this location for complete guitars specs.

Waters recently checked in with the following blast from the past:

"Wow. As some might know, Judas Priest brought Annihilator on tour in 1991 as special guest on the Painkiller tour and again in 2004 on the Reunited tour (when Lord Halford came back).  A kind fan alerted me to the fact that Judas Priest has done 17 studio CDs and that I am currently writing for Annihilator's 16th studio CD. OUCH! I know there is NO comparison there, as Priest are the Gods of Metal, but it's an interesting and cool thing in the eyes of a once-14 year old kid, while mowing his parents' lawn, listening via a Walkman cassette player, to all Priest records from Screaming For Vengeance and back! And dreaming of being in a band someday and maybe even meeting them! Man, did those wishes/dreams ever get exceeded!"

Check out Annihilator's openeing set on the Painkiller tour from 1991 in Belgium. The setlist was as follows:

"W.T.Y.D."
"The Fun Palace"
"Road To Ruin"
"Never, Neverland"
"Stonewall"
"Alison Hell"