Annihilator mainman Jeff Waters has issued the following statement regarding current events, updates, Never, Neverland/Alice In Hell 30th Anniversary Tour/shows and random thoughts.
 
“Bands have tours, releases, appearances, shows, festivals, etc... and obviously most all are or will be cancelled. Most musicians need those things to eat, pay bills and live. Regardless of what the public image of some ‘rock stars’ is, many famous one's are in trouble. Even David Crosby just mentioned in an interview that he could lose his house, if the next six months of shows are cancelled so imagine the one's who have not got the 10's of millions of records sold behind them (ya, bad money management or crappy unforeseen circumstances, divorces, illness, bad management, etc... can be a cause of even the superstars losing all). So support musicians/bands if you can, by buying online merch and anything else they have to offer. I am buying some cool shirts and thinking of other ways to help a few friends i know in bands. This crisis has already been devastating to many of them.

In my/Annihilator's case, I have been super fortunate so far. Here's why.

Building the new studio in 2018-2019, plus immigration issues and the passing of Randy Rampage (he was tentatively going to be our support with his band Rampage) caused me to postpone our October-December 2018 tour until oct-dec 2019 AND push back the release of our (17th studio) CD. We did our own in-house promo with my wife arranging for press to come up before the tour, to do interviews on-site about the studio, the move from Canada and a bit on the new CD plus upcoming two month mega-tour.

We used the promo to promote the tour and the tour to promote the CD, releasing songs and videos before Xmas and during the tour plus playing some new songs live.
I wanted to do that tour in oct-dec 2019 and it was a big success... then came the cd release in mid-January 2020. If we had done the tour AFTER the release of the new cd, which would have been then pushed to Feb-April 2020, our "big" tour would have been cancelled, as we know today. So we got lucky and turns out I was spot-on to push the tour before the cd release! So i am gonna pass it on to some who need help and so should you.

Last year was the 30th Anniversary of Alice In Hell. The legendary Rampage passed away shortly after we were discussing him coming on tour with us and possibly doing a summer 2019 or 2020 festival run. So we did a small tribute to Randy at the end of our set, on the recent tour.

Now we are in 2020 and also in the 30th Anniversary of my favorite, most critically acclaimed and best-selling Annihilator cd: Never, Neverland. Coburn Pharr (original singer on this record) came to our home and studio this past summer and discussed the possibility of doing a 30th Anniversary show or tour or summer run. We agreed it would be awesome!

I talked with our former tour agent about filling the summer 2020 up with festivals where we would play the entire Neverland record and finish up with some classic Rampage/Alice songs. It was left too late and didn't happen (phew, cause it would have been cancelled!), as the agent felt there would be no interest or "added value".
I did not believe that and I am sure you fans out there don't either. So it looks like things happened for a reason for us... again, we here should pass the good fortunes on to others.

2020 we are scheduled to play Wacken, the mightiest festival in the world... of any kind. Assuming that happens, we also have fall 2020 of shows coming. BUT, how does this sound?

Since this years touring for many bands will be messed up from this ‘worse-than-usual-flu’, we are thinking of pushing back the 30 year Anniversary to next year and assume all will understand the 30 year thing... we would also include classics from Alice In Hell with this set and let's call it 31 years since that! Hope we can bring Coburn Pharr back for some or all of these ideas/shows and maybe have a few surprise guests along the way!

SO OFFICIALLY, let's call 2021 the year of the "Never, Neverland/Alice In Hell 30th Anniversary Shows"

Festival Promoters, let's get on this! 

Now let's be safe, don't panic, be smart, help others through this and come back better. Just a suggestion. If you are grocery shopping or at a Pharmacy, and see anyone you think is above 60 or looking a bit under the weather or disabled in any way, let them take your spot in the line; they are at a higher risk and need to get out of the public areas quicker than, let's say, me!”