Annihilator frontman / founder Jeff Waters takes another trip down memory lane, this time reflecting on recording the band's 1994 salbum, King Of The Kill. It was the first of three consecutive Annihilator albums to feature Waters on guitar, lead vocals and bass.

Waters: "Nice shorts. King Of The Kill recording sessions at Watersound Studios, Maple Ridge, BC, Canada. Spring/Summer 1994.

(My shorts and) I remember watching the OJ Simpson chase on that little tv in the corner. I gave that LP guitar away but it had played only on one or two parts of a song or two. The main rhythm and lead was that Black SG. The cleans were with the blue strat. That was in the days when four Alesis ADAT's and a BRC were the thang! They were insane for us musicians and studios but put a lot of studios out of business. Previously to these coming out in the early 90's, you would use mostly 2 inch tape and those would cost hundreds of dollars and only let you record something like 15 minutes on it. Then you had to buy another tape and another, etc. Sometimes, 2 inch tape (that played and recorded on huge, high-temp, fussy, maintenance machines) budgets for the big bands ran into the many thousands of dollars... a lot. Plus temperature, transporting and storage cost ya. 

With the advent of digital stuff, which Alesis initially became the kings of with the Masterlink (a thingy to record your mix onto) and ADATS, I could literally go to the local 7-11 store and grab a VHS video tape for $7. That's what they used to record with in this new digital audio format. Those who know about this stuff were stunned and it opened up so much more at such a lower cost, even though we didn't realize that the A/D converter tech was pretty shitty for a good five years after its release, but this studio of mine was equipped with some of the first ones. I think I got them in '93? 

Things sure have come a long way in the studio biz. The only really fkd thing was that so many of us older farts understand that the REAL way to make GREAT music, generally was as a band, not at home, in a studio and with tape. Why? 'Cause you had to be a seriously well rehearsed band and you ALL had to be fkn great players. No computers. No computer vocal fixing software. Just be a killer musician and play good... and with the other members. Nowadays, we can email a Dropbox link to someone around the world, they play on it in their home studio and send it back. All of this tech is AMAZING; the only downside is that band thing and that need to take your playing to a way higher level to be able to record old school. No one is gonna really fix it up that much! 

King Of The Kill was my first 'not in a big and real studio' record. Luckily, that fkr sold huge overseas and more in Japan. 

To end this babble, I revert back to the beginning: Nice Shorts, Jeff!"