Annihilator Guitarist Speaks On Tim "Ripper" Owens

Chad Bowar from About Heavy Metal recently conducted an interview with ANNIHILATOR guitarist Jeff Waters. Here are some extracts from the conversation:

Chad Bowar: "Metal" has been out for nearly a year in Europe. What was the delay in getting a North American release?

Jeff Waters: "I've been away from the states since 1993. My home country Canada hasn't seen us tour there since '93, nor has the U.S. So we haven't really had a proper release there. This is more of a proper release, although it's not going to get us out front and get us in all the magazines there. But SPV will try to get us a little momentum. We've had a good following in Europe and Asia since the first record in 1989. The first three records did pretty well in North America, then in 1993 Metal went out and we decided stay overseas where we were doing well, and that's where we've been all this time. I've tried to get Canadian and U.S. deals for many albums over many years. This is the 12th studio album, and after the third one it was almost impossible because in the '90s traditional Metal went out. It was only in the underground. No promoters and clubs would book anything with 'Metal' in it. And now it's really tough for us, because we an 'older' band, and labels would rather sign the newer stuff. We don't have that guaranteed big sales thing, where overseas we keep getting resigned and getting good deals and doing good tours because we do have the sales over there."

Chad Bowar: You sang lead vocals on a track on "Metal" and you were actually the full-time vocalist for ANNIHILATOR for a while in the '90s. Do you miss being the vocalist?

Jeff Waters: "No. I did it on 'King Of The Kill' (1994), 'Refresh The Demon' (1996) and 'Remains' (1997). I just did it because I couldn't find anyone around where I was living. Friends of mine conned me into giving it a try. 'King Of The Kill' was a big album everywhere except North America, and we did three videos for the album. I was laughing because I was very insecure as a singer. I'm not really a singer. I just picked it up at the age of 26. But it worked well. Eventually it became too physically demanding. I wanted to concentrate on guitar and we brought back an old singer, Randy Rampage. Once in a while I'll sing on a record. It's fun to do, but I'm not great at it and it's very physically demanding. When we're doing touring, I do three or four songs if we're the opening act, and six out of 18 in a headline set."

Chad Bowar: What do you think about ICED EARTH bringing back Matt Barlow and replacing Ripper Owens?

Jeff Waters: "It's good and bad. It's good for Jon (Schaffer). I know where Jon's coming from, because sometimes you have to make decisions where half the people think it's a great thing and half the people don't. But there is a lot of stuff behind the scenes that you don't know go on, and Jon has to make decisions. I was very close to those guys on the ICED EARTH tour. We were all friends and hanging out for over a month. Everybody got along. Jon and Ripper were best of buddies. There was no negativity at all. It was actually one of the best tours I've ever done for getting along with the other band. It was a really close, cool tour and they are all nice guys. It's sad to see a great singer like Tim leave that gig. But at the same time Jon feels it's going to put some extra life in the band, a kickstart. It's cool to see Matt come back, too. I hope Ripper does some really good things, because he has one of the best voices in Metal."

Read the full article at About.com.

Source: Metaleater