Jeff:  Well, except for no sleep, but I guess that goes with the package

Ron: To get started, also congratulations on the new album.  I enjoyed it very much, and my listeners are also enjoying it.  The biggest change of course, on the new album is the addition of Joe on vocals.  Joe is actually from around here, in Rochester.

Jeff: Yeah, he’s been living in Rochester for quite some time, and been playing in overkill for about 7 years on guitar

R: So we’re always rootin’ for him

J: Yeah, I forgot, you guys are in the same city!

R: The new album, everyone is saying, and I agree on this count, its very diverse in terms of the range styles it goes through.  How much of that diversity can be attributed to the addition of Joe?

J: Well I guess definitely 50% has gotta be, because of the fact that he’s doing what I usually do with the music in the band, which is write different styles, different changes.  Different styles of metal, everything from melodic to thrash to death metal, to more commercial styles, blues, jazz, classical.  Whole bunch of different styles of the years in these songs I’ve been writing.  And I’ve finally found a vocalist that actually does the same sort of thing.  At the beginning when I first got Joe up here to work on the record, that was one of our first concerns, after the second or third song, we were going “you know, there’s something wrong here, the voice is completely different for every song!” is that good or bad?  We were scratching our heads pondering that thought, and we looked at each other, shook our heads and went “nah, forget it, lets just do it!” and at the end what you’ve got, is that not only is the music diverse like it usually is, all of a sudden the vocals are doing it, so it magnifies it about 10 times.  You really really can hear all the influences of Joe and myself on this one, all the different 80s metal bands that are coming through loud and clear, which normally wouldn’t be as obvious.

R:   For instance, shallow grave, a friend of mine is a huge AC/DC fan, I played that track for him and he was like “Wow!” 

T:  Well, that was one of the songs we did that was more just… well I guess we were having fun doing all of them, I guess it was a joke song, not as in a silly thing, but like, here’s a tribute to one of our favorite bands, ac/dc and the bon Scott era, and I had some music that I did on purpose, to sound like ac/dc but not actually use their riffs, and using the same drum beats and bass lines that they probably would put on it, and Joe heard it and was like “let me sing to that, let me sing to that!”  And I was like “no no, we gotta work on the songs on the record!” but slowly and surely we just got psyched behind that song and said forget it, this is our tribute to AC/DC!

R:  Did you consider anyone else besides Joe for the job?

T: Well, one of my prerequisites to getting a singer this time around was, I thought if I was gonna continue on with this, I wanted to make sure I got somebody who was gonna stay in it for a while.  So my main concern was finding a guy that wasn’t into drugs, or a heavy drinker, or have a big rock star sort of attitude.  Those three things are the main reason why anyone doesn’t last in any position in a band.  So I toured with Joe last year, with overkill through Europe, and he asked me to audition after that tour, for annihilator as a singer, I was like “well, I dunno” cause I didn’t see him as a singer.  But then I thought about it, I went “wait a minute” I toured with him for a couple months, and he wasn’t drinking, he doesn’t do drugs, he doesn’t smoke, he’s got a great attitude, and he’s great to get along with, with everybody, he had no problems with anybody.  And that’s a big thing too, when you’re spending a lot of time on a bus with the same people, can you get along with people, and I was like “this is the guy!” so it was almost like, in a way I thought he’d be the perfect guy before I even heard him sing!

R:  Now that, first with criteria, and now the new album, are readily available to everybody in North America, you finally got some label support

J: Finally got the other records out too. Assuming roadrunner does some re-releases, which I’m assuming they will, all 10 annihilator CD's should be available.  Did you hear that?  10!  I’m gettin’ old!  I’m 34, whoa!

R: Oh yeah, your birthday is coming up in February

J: Yep, Friday the 13th!  ’66, at 6’o’clock!

R: That’s a pretty metal birthday.  Now that you’ve got that label support, do you think we’ll see an annihilator tour of North America?

J:  Yeah, we’re trying to get there April, if we can’t get it done that early, we’ll definitely be there this time, its just that, we had the states all set up last year, and then our singer departed, and that basically goofed everything up for us, but now I can say, if there are no snags we’ll definitely be there in some way

R: Seeing as how you draw your inspiration from so many different places, do you find it hard to get what could be a cohesive album, how do you put it together?

J:  It's almost like I can’t just take one style and draw from it and keep that as a theme and write a whole record using that sort of vibe, or whatever.  That’s why our albums are so diverse, because I get inspiration from one style, then I boom, get a completely different style for the next song I write, maybe the next day or the next week or something.  For me writing is… easy… its just a matter of, you know, if it becomes too easy you just sit there pumping stuff out and then your quality goes down, cause there’s no quality control.  But the hard part for me is getting started.  Sometimes when I sit down to try and write a record it’ll take me a month, of just dry spell, where I don’t get anything, and you get all bummed out and start worrying if you’ve lost it, and all this baloney, then all of a sudden you get in there one day and start writing some great riffs and puttin' songs together and you just forget about it and your on a roll, but getting on the roll is the hard part

R:  I know that for the most part, annihilator has basically been a Jeff waters thing, now that Joe is there and sharing the writing credit on the songs, is it gonna be more of a band type of situation?

J:  Yeah, annihilator has pretty well been a solo project/band from day one, its been my baby, I started in ’84, 16 years ago, of course I’ve been the writer and producer, and take care of most of the business end of things, and hired guys for touring and this kind of thing, but when we actually tour, it’s a band, its not Jeff waters goes on tour with his hired guys, its more like, we’re all just a band.  This time around its much more promising, for that end of it, because of course Joe, well actually originally john bates has been my co-lyricist for most of the years of annihilator and this time I didn’t phone him up and ask him to write any lyrics for this record, because Joe had told me “hey I can write lyrics, let me give it a shot!” and I was kind of skeptical because I hadn’t really heard anything he’d done before, and I have this standard I have to live up to on these records and I’ve been writing for, you know, 16 years, so I was assuming I’d end up writing most of the stuff again, but when I heard what Joe was doing, I was quite pleasantly surprised, because it wasn’t just good or adequate, it was fantastic!  Some of my favorite songs on the records are songs that he co-wrote or wrote himself on lyrics.  The song Carnival Diablos for example is probably my favorite song on the CD, and he wrote the lyrics for it.  So that’s a bonus here, because Joe's more part of the band than anyone’s ever been as far as the singer goes, so its more of a band effort this time, and hopefully it’ll remain that way

R: So Joe hoping to stay around for the long haul?

J:  I hope so, we hope so that’s for sure.  Definitely the coolest guy to write with and to just come off the CD.  Listening to this CD, its probably the most exciting CD for me and its not because of my guitar riffs or songwriting, its because of his vocals.

R:   Well, compared to when he sang in liege lord, he’s showing a lot more range here

J:  Yeah, some of the tapes I heard of Joe before, he was singing in this kind of standard, rough, sorta Pantera style voice, and then I heard some liege lord stuff and it was so high, whereas on this new one I’ve got a zillion emails and comments from fans and interview people and stuff saying “whoa, he sounds nothing like that!”  He’s got such range.  He can sing low, clean, dirty, high, and on top of that, he can clone other vocalists.  Which can have good and bad qualities, but its such a great thing when we’re trying to do tribute stuff or try and capture a style we hear in our heads.

R:  Well he does a great Bon Scott

J:  You got it; he’s brilliant at that.  Mind you, I’m not too bad at sounding like other guys on guitar! And I’ve heard that from a lot of people.

R:  I gotta ask you about the song… what’s up with Chicken and Corn?

J:  That’s a very serious song. It’s very deep in my heart.   Actually it’s a really stupid goofy song I wrote for my kids, and they just loved it.  I wrote the music for it and I heard them upstairs just laughing and stomping and saying, “what is that funny music?”  And I thought “perfect, that’s what I’m gonna do” write a kids song.  So I just snuck that on there to see if anyone would notice.  Got a few band members and a few people wondering what the heck that was doing on a heavy metal record, but I snuck it on there and it stayed!

R: I saw an interview with Joe where he said, “I told Jeff I don’t want my name anywhere near that song!” 

J: Perfect! That’ll be the hit!

R: Is that like a sequel to Kraf Dinner?

J:  Hmm, it wasn’t intended like that, but it does have the common theme of food

R: And goofiness, I guess

J: Actually, Joe should want his name connected to that, if it ever got picked up for a movie or a soundtrack, hey, there’s some money to be made there?

R: Speaking of Kraf Dinner, what the hell does “full of love and butter” mean?

J: Hmm… well, I dunno, butter, I guess because I used to pile butter in my Kraft dinner and mix it up.  Full of love, I guess you gotta love that stuff if you eat it every day, and that’s what I was doing. I had to eat that stuff every day for a few years… well I didn’t HAVE to but…

R: Well I’m in college I know the feeling.  Well, I think I’m all out of questions…

J: Good, cause you know what the record company does?  They book me interviews every 15 minutes for like 6 hours!  So If I go like 2 minutes over with somebody and then 2 minutes with the next guy, by the time I get to end of the day I’m an hour late for every interview!  It’s crazy.  But good talking to you, and maybe we’ll see you down there in April or the summertime, we’re trying to get down for some tours

R: Hey, hope so man, I’d love to see you guys, and good luck with everything, and good luck surviving all your interviews today!

J: Yeah, no kidding, take care!

R: See you later!

J: Bye Ron