ANNIHILATOR Frontman Talks 'Metal'

Yiannis Zervos of the Metal-Temple.com webzine recently conducted an interview with Dave Padden of ANNIHILATOR. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

Metal-Temple.com: Did you know ANNIHILATOR before you joined them?

Dave Padden: Yeah, I had "Alice In Hell" when it first came out, when I was 13 years old. I had the first two albums and then, when "Set The World On Fire" got out, I was getting more into stuff like FAITH NO MORE, SOUNDGARDEN, ALICE IN CHAINS and stuff like that, not as much metal. So I lost ANNIHILATOR after that, and I didn't even know if they were still going, until I think I was working on Virgin Megastores when I was like 22 or something like that, and I was going through the racks and I thought "Wow, ANNIHILATOR, look at this, holy crap they've been busy". I didn't even know there were all these albums.

Metal-Temple.com: What is it like to work with Jeff Waters?

Dave Padden: It's interesting [pause and laughs]. It's good, when we did "All For You", I'd never done an album before and it was just a big experimentation for the both of us, we just try anything we can, 'cause Jeff didn't know what I could do and so we just go for it, and said "let's do this" and "let's do that", "how about this?", "can you do this?" and I said "I think so, I don't know, let's try it". That is how this album turned out, it was really experimental, that's why it sounds like there is probably a few different singers in every song. But we kind of solidified what I was doing when we got into "Schizo". Made it sound a little bit more like me, instead of trying to sound like a bunch of other singers.

Metal-Temple.com: Whose idea was it to have so many guest appearances on the last album?

Dave Padden: I think it was one of those weird coincidences. While we were recording Jeff had been talking to Bealieu from TRIVIUM when they were in the studio and Corey said "hey, do you think I could do a solo on the album?" and Jeff said "yeah, sure, why not?" While he was in the studio in the States, doing a TRIVIUM album, he recorded a solo and sent it back to us and Jeff started thinking talking to other people that we know and like ANNIHILATOR, and it just kinda snowballed for there. Everybody we asked said "yeah, lets do it!" so [it] worked out really well.

Metal-Temple.com: It's weird because one or two guest appearances are OK, but the whole album...?

Dave Padden: The whole thing about that is, that everybody on the album is a fan of ANNIHILATOR, it wasn't that we gathered a bunch of big stars, I mean I'm not saying that the people we have aren't, it's just we could have asked so many just for the sales. But the whole point was to get somebody on there that was excited about it, really loved ANNIHILATOR and wanted to do something.

Read the entire interview at Metal-Temple.com.