Jeff Waters & Dave Padden - Annihilator

June 21 2010 (Hellfest - Clisson)

The day has come when we finally meet one of the most underestimated metal band, notably in terms of inspiration onto others. Just a few hours before their show at the Hellfest, the founder of Annihilator Jeff Waters, along with his wingman for several years now, Dave Padden spoke us about their show to come, their eponym very good new record, their inspiration, the fans, and some other things. Of course, the fifteen minutes allowed were too short, but we do have the hope to see the Canadians back in France very soon…

Fab: So, welcome to Hellfest…
Jeff Waters (Guitar/Vocals): (cutting in hesitating French) Bienvenue au festival...Is that it? How do you say it?

Fab: Bienvenue au "Festival de l'Enfer".
Jeff Waters: Bienvenue à Hellfest, yeah, good…Toi aussi (laughter)

Fab : (Laughter) You're playing today here at the HELLFEST. Did you heard about this festival beforehand ?
Jeff Waters: Oh yeah, I heard about it. A lot of friends of ours, in other bands, other groups, played here and said "you must come and play", so now we get to play with NEVERMORE, ANVIL, people that we know… ARCH ENEMY… yeah, it's one big party.

Fab : The new album is very well balanced between heavy riffs and melodic choruses (" Coward ", " Nowhere to go "), could you explain us the process of achieving that ?
Jeff Waters: Oh, Dave and I like, we always like different styles of music. We haven't been listening to one style of music. We like melodic heavy metal, heavy metal, thrash metal… Dave and I both like some of the newer metal styles too. He likes it a little bit more than I am, maybe because he's a bit younger than I am, but yeah, we try to combine it all into our style but, one minute we have heavy music, and then we have melodic music.

Fab : The first song of the album, named " The Trend ", is about those who don't respect the art of music, who are here just for the money, maybe some of the new generations ?
Jeff Waters: "The Trend" was actually written to be more of a, just a smiling, a light song, it wasn't meant to be mean, or to say bad things about anyone. I just noticed that there was a lot of bands that, now that metal is more popular, and that it's coming back very strong, there was a lot of other bands that were not heavy metal bands that now want to be heavy metal bands. So I just, they don't usually last very long but…it's really actually kind of a fun song, it's not really a serious song.

Fab : How came to you the very serious and factual subject of " 25 seconds " ? Because just after the almost eerie bass line, I was struck by the outright rage and anger of the vocals.
Jeff Waters: Dave lives in a city where… (turning to Dave) You can explain that one, right? Vancouver?

Dave Padden (Guitar/Vocals): Well, I don't know if you remember, this was a while ago in a Vancouver airport. There was an incident where the Police "tasered" a Polish guy in the airport there, and he died. So this song was basically trying to capture the emotion he was going through while he was like, starting to find, you know, just being under attack and not knowing what was going on, and just the rage and the frustration and everything. Imagine how I was supposed to be like if I was trying…to be really angered, furious and angry, scared and frustrated…

Jeff Waters: That's for his perspective as a singer. As he was singing, he was singing very heavy, a little too heavy I thought, but, that's what was going on in the situation. But the actual song is more to bring awareness to a really really tragic and terrible event that happened by the airlines, by the Canadian Police…It was just a really bad thing. I've been to Poland many times playing with ANNIHILATOR, we had lots of companies that we've been endorsed with from Poland, we have a lot of Polish friends, and we just wanted to let them know in a song that we were on their side, not on the side of the Canadian Police on that one.

Fab : Is it correct to say that lyric wise, it's almost a concept album on betrayal ? Betrayal of society (" Nowhere to go "), of your partner in life (" The Other Side "), of your nation (" 25 seconds ")…
Jeff Waters: No. Oh…(thinking and counting my examples)...Maybe "The trend", yeah (still thinking)…well, I didn't know it was, maybe it is a mini concept album, yeah (laughter).

Fab: Still speaking about lyrics, when reading most of yours, - at the difference of a lot of metal bands who wrote "metal minded" lyrics for the sake of it (about hell, the devil, death…) - Annihilator seems rather to use some imagery to expose very realistic themes and serious subjects. Psychological illness, Guilt ("Fun Palace"), driving being drunk ("Road to ruin"), the environment ("Stonewall"), etc.
I mean, there's always something behind what it first appears…

Fab : Concerning the design and illustrations, you gave ideas and guidelines to Gyula Havancsak (hard time pronouncing it)?
Jeff Waters: Yeah, Gyula. Hey, you got the last one right, that's the hard one (laughter). He's from Budapest, he's a friend of ours, a guitar player actually, and he's been, he worked on Destruction albums, before that he was...I mean, my band was one of the first couple of bands that he'd worked on. He's done all of our cd covers and backdrops and things for many many years. On this new cd, we just said… I didn't have ideas for the cover, but I had a nightmare one night about seeing a ghost, a girl like Linda Blair from "The Exorcist". Then I saw Linda Blair floating up on the end of my bed, so I woke up and emailed him and said "hey, you gonna put a ghost like "The Exorcist" and make it a dead "Alison Hell". So, that's pretty how that cover came.

Fab : Why's the choice of " Romeo Delight " (from " Women & Children First " 1980) for the Van Halen cover ?
Jeff Waters: Yeah, "Women and Children First" was an album that I really like in 1980. I was very young then, a teenager, and I wanna do a cover song on a ANNIHILATOR cd because we had not done a cover song on an official studio cd ever. So I just wanted to make something that meant a lot to me when I was young. So, that's song was important for me.
(me turning to Dave)

Dave Padden: I just do what I'm told on that one (laughter).
Jeff Waters: You sung that one good.
Dave Padden: I was afraid to do it because when he told me he wanna do a Van Halen cover, I was like…yeah, sure, you can play good Van Halen, but I don't know if I really wanna try to sing David Lee Roth, I don't wanna screw this.
Jeff Waters: It's difficult but, well, you didn't screw it. We took a chance both of us.
Dave Padden: (Turning to Jeff) You got a better chance of nailing it than I do. Well, I thought anyway. Once I got over it, and stopped being scared about it, and started having fun with it, I think it turned out pretty cool. I actually really like it when we're playing it. It was a lot of fun to do.
Jeff Waters: And when I hear a lot of people comment on the song, most of the comments are about the vocals, that they like the vocals. So, it worked pretty good. I hope that means I don't suck (general laughter).

Fab: (Turning to Dave, who seems flattered by these comments) You seems surprised…
Dave Padden: Euh, I don't know, I'm just one of those people that just never sees myself the way other people talk about me. I think it's better to have this attitude than think I'm awesome or whatever. I'm always trying to improve, I'm always trying to get better. If I think I'm amazing, then I won't get any better, so…

Fab : Did you found stability with the Annihilator line-up ? Do you consider Dave Padden as your wingman ?
Jeff Waters: Only fifty per cent. Dave has been here for almost eight years. Basically Dave and I hired a drummer for the studio, to record the cd. And then later, we said "ok, it's time to get on tour, we need to get a bass player and a drummer". So we look for different bass players, different drummers. Hopefully they stay with it, but it's not…The main band is Dave and I so…Fifty per cent.

Dave Padden: Sometimes, the other guys they have other bands, they have other things they have to do, or their job, or whatever. Not everybody can do this all the time, so…We're just trying to get whatever we can get kind of thing.
Jeff Waters: It's kinda fun to work with other drummers. There's so many good drummers that we got to work with Annihilator. And I love drums, so this, the way Annihilator works, I get to work with many different drummers.

Fab : You've toured a lot. Did you felt a change, an evolution of the audience throughout the years ?
Jeff Waters: I guess we're…we have faithful fans that have been with us right since the beginning, and they were in their early twenties, or late teenagers when "Alice In Hell" came out and "Never Neverland". And sometimes, we see them now in their thirties of forties, so it's great. But what we do notice, like many of these bands (showing the Hellfest bill), like I'm sure Twisted Sisters, Slayer or Metallica, their hardcore fans are bringing their kids to the shows now, so that's really cool.

Fab : Why didn't you sing a song on the last album?
Jeff Waters: The last album was an album where Dave really was….(turning to him, and like casting him aside while saying to him "You're not here") he was singing really really good. And he was, like we say, on a roll, and I didn't want to stop him. I had one song that I thought I would sing on, but, since he was singing so good on the last album, I just let him finish the record. A lot of the time, I save one song for me, less work for him so he can relax and concentrate on the songs, and I can do one that maybe we're going to play live. Play guitar riffs onstage like tonight, and sing at the same time, it's not an easy job, so, sometimes I like to sing to give him a rest. Like tonight I'll sing "King Of The Kill" and a song called "The Box" (First song tonight.)

Spirit: Told me last time (in Czech Republic) you won't play it :p
Dave Padden: No, no, not "NEver" I've said "I don't know if we EVer gonna do it again".
Jeff Waters: Did we played it?
Dave Padden: We dit it when I first came on.
Jeff Waters: Oh yeah. I think it's the first song we do today. Very slow song…
Dave Padden: I don't make the choices (laughter).
Jeff Waters: …so we can fall asleep (general laughter).
Spirit : still my fave song…

Fab: Why an eponym album?
Jeff Waters: Couldn't think of a good name. We tried. Most of the time, what we do is look at the songtitle, and say which could be a good name. "King Of The Kill", "King of the kill", "Never neverland", etc….The're all album tracks. But this one doesn't have any titles that would be good for a cd. So Dave said "Why don't we just call it Annihilator?" Sounds good. We'd never had a cd called Annihilator before, so.

Fab : During your career, Did you felt that ANNIHILATOR was sometimes underrated ?
Jeff Waters: It depends, I mean, I guess if you're looking for, I mean, if I was here for the money and sales or attention, covers of magazines, things like that, yes, we would be underrated, but, I think we're just, we are at a level of success where we.. we're not like the big bands like Slayer of Megadeth, but we have enough of following where we can make a living and we can tour around the world and have a lot of good fans and friends. So, no, we don't have any regrets. We're happy. If I can keep doing this like today, I'm happy.

Fab: Is there someone you know, who inspired you a lot, but who's not a musician?
Jeff Waters: Non musician? Euh...how typical, well, my father. I already said that but it's true. Probably him too I'm guessing (showing Dave).
Dave Padden: Well, my dad is a musician so (laughter).
Jeff Waters: (still thinking) I don't know. It's a good question. Yeah, my father.

Fab : According to you, wich recent band is the closest to a legitimate heir of ANNIHILATOR ?
Jeff Waters & Dave Padden (frighteningly together): I have no idea! (laughter)

Jeff Waters: Is that a new band from the States? "I Have No Idea"? (laughter). Let me think about that. There's no heir, I think there is just a lot of… the cool thing about metal, is that bands like Trivium, Children Of Bodom, and all these other bands, they are like Annihilator, where we have many many influences from fifty bands, and we put them altogether and we make or own band. And that's kinda like what all those other bands are like too. Some of the bands I've mentioned take a little bit of Annihilator, a little bit of Metallica, of Slayer, etc…it's kinda like we are all related. It's like a family. It sounds kinda silly but… There is no heir to the throne. Metallica's always the king, right? Other than that, there's nothing to pass on.

Dave Padden: Well, I'll tell you what … Until I put you in a retirement home and I take over the band
Jeff Waters: (With a sad smile) Yeah…Kiss are still going (laughter).

Fab : Is there a question that you would have loved for me to ask you, but that I didn't ask ?
Jeff Waters: I don't know. Oh, I am underrated, there is one thing I'm underrated at: It's bass playing. I play bass on all the Annihilator cds, but nobody knows that (ndr of course we know). And I think that sometimes, the bass is even better than the guitar (general laughter). That's ok, I don't care, it's not important to me (laughter).