Dead Rhetoric: Do you remember your first encounter with him?
Waters: Dave was auditioning for the singing slot. He came into my studio in Vancouver at the time, I asked him how long he had been singing and he said “All my life.” What bands have you been in? “Well, none.” [laughs]. He had never sang other than karaoke and jamming with some other bands. He was a guitar player in Theory Of A Deadman for a little while, obviously Nickelback-ish rock ‘n’ roll, he was in there for a very short time touring. He loved nu-metal, everything from Korn to Disturbed on through to Slayer and Exodus, so he was well versed on the genre. He sang two songs from Set the World on Fire – “Sounds Good to Me” and the title track, and I knew right away he was a nice guy. As long as he wasn’t messed up on drugs or booze it could work, I thought that he had a real diverse voice. The only negative was that he had no experience, so I hired him and then a few months later I put him in front 200,000 people between a few shows, like the Wacken Festival and before he even did a record with me I put him in front of the biggest crowds. He had a real tough time, understandably the fans were like “What’s going on.” I stuck with him, he stuck with me and it worked.
Dead Rhetoric: Are you starting to get more comfortable with him playing more guitar on the album and in live situations?
Waters: Yes, the thing is he doesn’t want to go further with that guitar playing by doing more solos, he does only a couple of solos barely in the set. He’s got this job where he has to play the guitar riffs which I’ve written – some are easy, some are kind of medium in difficulty, and some are really hard to play – and he’s got the double whammy to sing over those riffs sometimes. Those riffs are not meant to be played and sung at the same time because they are different timings. A guy like James Hetfield, and Glenn Tipton from Judas Priest does this as well, when the vocalist is singing, the guitar playing is very simple, sometimes with those bands it is just one note. As soon as the singer stops singing, bang here comes the guitar riff. Hetfield and Tipton, they are geniuses at writing music like that so that the vocals you can concentrate on them. I don’t write like that, I can’t, and I’ve tried it for Dave’s sake, I write the music and then tell Dave “Sing over this.” So Dave is totally overloaded as it is, to sing and play with him on this stuff.
Dead Rhetoric: What has been one of the strangest and /or most fascinating fan encounters through the years?
Waters: I don’t know if this is good enough for the answer but the first thing that came to mind is we had an album cover in 2010 that had a cross between Linda Blair meets a zombie meets this Alice In Hell character on the album. On the cover of the record it was self-titled, instead of our traditional logo we have on the record we carved the name Annihilator into the girl’s forehead. At a show somewhere in Europe a couple of our crew guys told us we had to see this girl. And we were thinking, “Oh ok, another pretty girl” [laughs]. So we go see her and we saw she was a girl who carved this into her forehead. Why did you do that? We were shocked at that one. We have a lot of those little things, but never ever violent or negative.
Dead Rhetoric: I’ve heard you mention that your style of picking places a lot of pressure on the shoulder. Have you had any serious injuries as a result of this technique, and do you have to do more warm-ups than other guitarists?
Waters: Almost. It’s not so much – the way I watch (James) Hetfield or (Eddie) Van Halen and a lot of these guys have a picking style that is very relaxed. Sometimes just from the wrist, a less demanding style than what I do. Somehow I got locked into this style where I tense the shoulder/ neck muscle on my picking arm, and tense the muscle all the way down past my elbow, not so much on my wrist. It weakens your arm over time, because you are exerting 50 times more [pressue] than what everyone else would do. I couldn’t get out of it, it just wouldn’t work. I have to warm up as well as I can. Since I have my own studio and I’ve done so much work in it, the computer mouse in the studio is starting to hurt my hand. When I am using that hand, I spend 60% of the time outside of studio work setting up the touring, the deals, the business side of things. That part is hurting my wrist, the use of a computer mouse, so I have to be really careful how much I use. I’ve made it to 47, so I should be able to manage it for a few more years before they have to cut that arm off [laughs].
Dead Rhetoric: Where do you see the state of the metal scene in 2013, and what do you think needs to happen for the movement to stay vital and alive?
Waters: We are in a slight little lull here. Anthrax, you had your singer switch with Joey Belladonna coming back, a great album and tour, so we are waiting for a new record and hoping it’s going to be a kick ass record. You’ve got Slayer who has lost the amazing Jeff Hanneman, but Kerry King also wrote a lot of their big songs too- they lost the team but they still have the one guy who could bring them back and resurrect themselves if he wants to do it. Gary Holt is now in there as one of the best riff writers and players in the history of thrash, very underrated guy. If Gary and Kerry hook up, if they block out the outside world and write one of the best records, they could do it for Slayer.
You have Metallica, there’s no new record from them. Megadeth are doing what they are doing. We are waiting, what’s coming. That may be one reason why the new Annihilator record is unexpectedly doing a zillion times better than anything since 2001. Within four hours of the actual release in Europe, which got released on a Friday the record company scrambled, EMI knew we had a problem because the first run sold out. The next week the label got it back in the stores for the next round and it’s selling out all over again. I never ever thought that would happen for this band over there. Our ticket sales for the upcoming tour have gone through the roof. In a way there is nothing coming out, Devildriver has a record coming out. With the lull of the big four, there is an emptiness. The timing of our record has helped, I hope some new records come out soon that kick ass. Metal fans are waiting for something, where is the next wave coming from? Where is the next surge of five or six killer records in six months? People are starving for stuff. I am searching iTunes looking for something I don’t already have that is all the old-school stuff.
Dead Rhetoric: How will that new foreign musician application fee affect the touring market in Canada in your opinion?
Waters: I haven’t really thought about that because we don’t really do many shows here. We did Heavy MTL, we did a show opening for Kiss a few years ago, and we did an amazing show in Quebec City that we may be going back to in a few weeks, and we do some hometown shows in Ottawa City before we go on the European tour as a warm up. It hasn’t affected us, I don’t know enough about that. If they are placing a tax or fee on bands, of course it’s going to affect bands that don’t play up here much. Let’s look at it from our perspective, if we go to play Paris, France, and let’s say you get paid $1 for the show. You want to see a real problem, let’s say your fee is $1, which is obviously not good for anyone, they take 50 cents of that and it is gone for an artist’s tax. On the other side…from my experience, I don’t think about that.
Dead Rhetoric: What’s on the Annihilator schedule for the rest of 2013 and early 2014 as far as touring and promotion?
Waters: The stuff that we know is happening is I’m going over to do Epiphone/ Gibson guitar clinics in Europe. They give me this fancy bus, a driver, and a tech to play music stores. You get to talk about music, the musicians ask questions. You influence people when you go to these things, they ask for advice on their playing and the business side and you realize you can do something cool for people. Do some rehearsals and we have a five-week headlining tour in Europe, come back and do a Japanese tour. Maybe Annihilator may do the 70,000 Tons of Metal cruise again. I have been talking to a lot of the bigger bands that I am friends with like Megadeth, trying to see if we can get on a tour with them in North America. Hopefully in the new year that can happen.