In a recent interview with Metal Wani's Laura Vezer, Annihilator bassist/guitarist/vocalist Jeff Waters offered details, including the writing process and musical direction, of their next studio album, which serve as the follow-up to last year's Suicide Society. A video of the interview can be viewed below.

Waters stated: "On the next one, the changes I'm gonna make... I only said two things. I've got all these people telling me, 'You've gotta go back to this album,' or that album, or that album, or that album. 'You've gotta do this,' 'You've gotta do that.' So what I do is I block it out. But I've decided that I'm going to not worry about catchy, commercial choruses ? 'commercial,' as in you remember it, where you intentionally make that chorus the most important part of the song and you want people to remember that one every time. That kind of is the opposite of what I used to do in the earlier days. In the earlier days, I would go, 'I don't care about the chorus being the main part; I want the whole song to be cool.' So therefore the choruses were not as commercial or catchy. And they remained heavy back then; the choruses would end up being heavy. Whereas on my Suicide Society record I just did, you could have a heavy song, but then you hit the chorus and you go, 'Woah, that's pretty mainstream stuff in the choruses.' And the other thing was, since I'm such a fan of so many bands, I let myself go a little bit on the last album with being too blatantly obvious with my influences and my musical loves as a fan. So you really heard a song that had a lot of the Master Of Puppets era of music from Metallica, and you really heard a Megadeth-y song on there, and you really heard in my vocals some Hetfield and Mustaine-isms. And I think that was great, as a fan, to get it out, but I think I need to do more of my own thing on the next record."

He was also asked whether he plans to surprise fans with a "super-thrashy" record next time around: "Because we've kind of been out of the North American scene since 1993, basically... We've dropped into Canada and played some shows ? Calgary Metalfest recently and Heavy MTL before that, and some locals shows ? but, generally, we've been out of the North American scene since 1993. Now that's a long time. So, younger fans started discovering us in the late '90s and then realized, 'Wait a second. The word 'annihilator.' That must be a thrash band.' And they check it out, and if they catch the right album or song, they're, like, 'Oh, this is cool,' and then they listen to another one and go, 'What the hell is that?' They're, like, 'Is this a ballad about his kid? What's this all about?' And there's some goofy, funny, kind of immature songs, songs about Kraft dinner and chicken and corn, believe it or not. We have all these different styles, 'cause I was influenced by hard rock, heavy metal and thrash metal. And then people will always hit me with, 'You need to go and do King Of The Kill [1994] again. That was your best record.' And then you get Americans online, or even Canadians, saying, 'Oh, Alice In Hell [1989], that was the only album you guys ever did that was any good.' And then you've got many European countries saying Never, Neverland [1990]... 'Cause that was the biggest album from us ? most successful one, sales-wise, at least, and touring-wise, and I think, personally, the best album. Then people are always saying, 'You've gotta do that one [again].' And then you get people in Italy and different countries going, 'No, no, no. Set The World On Fire you did in '93, that was your best album.' So, like I think I mentioned already, the first four albums were four different singers and four different styles of metal and hard rock music. So which one is the better one? If you ask somebody in one country, you're gonna get this album, and you go to the next country, overwhelmingly Germany would say something like Never, Neverland and King Of The Kill, and you go to Italy, and it's Set The World On Fire. You can't please everybody, and it can drive you nuts."

Source:	youtube.com
Band profile:	Annihilator