ANNIHILATOR's JEFF WATERS To Release Second AMERIKAN KAOS Album, 'All That Jive', In April

On April 4, 2025, Metal Department will release the sophomore album from AMERIKAN KAOS, "All That Jive".

AMERIKAN KAOS is the "secret love child" of guitar virtuoso Jeff Waters, best known from ANNIHILATOR, which he has been working on since 2019.

AMERIKAN KAOS marks a significant shift in the musical journey of Waters. With a career spanning decades and numerous albums, Jeff embarks on a new project that promises to blend a variety of musical influences, transcending the boundaries he experienced with ANNIHILATOR.

AMERIKAN KAOS was born from Jeff's lifelong passion for diverse music genres, ranging from blues, punk, thrash, and heavy metal to pop, classical, and jazz. The global shutdown provided the perfect opportunity for Jeff to delve into this creative endeavor, aiming to explore beyond the familiar territories of ANNIHILATOR.

The challenge for Jeff was to create a unique sound, distinct from his influences and past works. The idea of writing music outside the thrash and heavy metal domain was daunting yet exciting. The project began to take shape with an eclectic mix of songs, each reflecting different musical styles, from pop to heavy metal, and everything in between (as the new album testifies to).

Jeff's vision for AMERIKAN KAOS expanded into a trilogy, each album showcasing different styles and featuring diverse line-ups and vocalists. This ambitious plan stemmed from his desire to write across multiple genres without being confined to a single style. The debut album, "Armageddon Boogie", was released to critical acclaim in May 2024.

Jeff comments: "Well, AMERIKAN KAOS was born out of the fact that I have spent my career with, of course, ANNIHILATOR, for many decades. 17 studio records and many other releases… and a lot of touring.

"People that follow ANNIHILATOR know that I like all kinds of music. I have influences from blues, punk, thrash, speed, heavy metal, to pop music, classical and jazz. I have tried to do as much of that with the ANNIHILATOR music as I could, but there was always a certain limit to the area I stay within. And I always knew for decades that I hoped I would have the opportunity to sit down and write a record for a new band or a new project for a different kind of music. I didn't really know what it would be. So, when the world shut down, I lost some interest in the writing side of ANNIHILATOR, and I took it as the perfect opportunity for me to explore my creativity and do something, finally, that lets me create and apply a lot of what I've loved and learned over the decades. Whether it is other musical styles than I have been known for making, different studio productions/technical ideas (engineering, producing, mixing… and have a blast making great music, with some great talents and people involved).

"As much as it was cool to have that time in the studio, it was also confusing, as I had no solid idea of the style of music I wanted to do, and I had to be careful that it was not too influenced by my favorite bands. I have so many different favorite bands and different types of music that when I write songs, sometimes they sound the same as other bands, because I'm so much of a fan of them. That was a tough thing to do, to decide to write a record when you are known as a thrash metal / heavy metal guitar player for your whole life. If you sit down and put something else out, it's going to get criticized, so I decided to just do what I wanted to do. I started writing a few songs and they were scattered...one was like a pop song, the next was back to a heavy metal song, the next was ROLLING STONES style and another with some THE KNACK grooves. So, I thought I really need to come up with a plan and get some focus here, because I can't just put out a record with ten or eleven songs that make no sense to each other. So, I decided what area I was going to go into for writing and try to keep some focus, but the problem was that I wanted to write across many areas and styles. I didn't want to be held back to one style again, so I thought what about maybe three records? What if I have the focus and time in the creative space that I was in during 2020? Why not spread the styles across three different records, with maybe three different singers and maybe three different sets of lineups or people? So that is where the trilogy came from, whether it made sense to anyone else. This was for me, to get the ideas out of me while I had the time and creative mindset to get it done.

"So, here we are in April, or whenever this is, of 2025. The second AMERIKAN KAOS record is coming out now. It's called 'All That Jive'. Kind of a play on words to '(All That) Jazz' by QUEEN, from 1978. And once again, like all three of the AMERIKAN KAOS record titles, they have some kind of style of dance included in the title.

"Each of those three records had been planned to be different. Different styles, different sounds, different production style, different mixing and even different musicians were on the table. I went with the amazing Stu Block as vocalist for this second record. As many of you will know, Stu has been in some other great metal bands and was on the ANNIHILATOR 'Metal II' record, as well as on the live stream that we did in June of 2024 for the 'Alice In Hell' 35th-year anniversary celebration, and also appearing on 12 of the 15 songs that have been recently recorded (or re-recorded),along with vocalist Aaron Randall from the 'Set The World On Fire' and 'Annihilator' albums. So, Stu has been a long time, well-known metal vocal god! But I was very well aware that he could do some many different styles of vocals and would be perfect for my second AMERIKAN KAOS record. The rules were simple with the vocals: On this one, try to stick to two to three sounds or styles or vocals, or whatever you want to call it. And in this case, I heard some faint tones in Stu's voice, akin to Mike Patton and David Draiman's thing, so we stuck to those vibes. Stu had a bit of influence to mix it with his own voice and stay within those boundaries, i.e. no metal screams, no things that would sound like Stu Block in his past life, and we were going to stick to those styles of vocals. So they would have their own unique sound and on each song you could really tell a signature sound from the singer.

"On the music side, it was completely different. I was trying to do different left and right channel rhythm guitars. A lot of guitars panned around in the center and off to the sides a little bit. And there would be different amplifiers, different pedals, different strings. Different picks, different guitars. And I wanted to try my best to sound like at least two different guitar players were playing, maybe three. I also was staying away from my own metal roots as well, as on the first AMERIKAN KAOS record, which showed a lot of very hard rock influences and sort of melodic heavy metal from the 1980s. I wanted to stay away from that, and the music wasn't that hard when I was pretty young. I actually grew up on, you know, 1970s music and even disco. And, you know, at the end of the 1970s you did have VAN HALEN coming out, but you also had THE KNACK which was like a very dirty ROLLING STONES and dirty BEATLES, you know, a really aggressive attitude band and I also liked a lot of the pop stuff that was on the radio so that got a little bit mixed into this as well. And once again, we tapped Bob Katsionis on keyboards, on piano, on organ and anything else that he could use his fingers on that sounded keyboardish. He didn't overplay, he tastefully put on different parts and stayed well away from the vocals, just brought his style out when it was needed. But the keyboards were really a sort of background feeling sound on this record. It was really a rock and roll two guitar, loud drums kind of record with raw vocals. But again, like on the first AMERIKAN KAOS record, without Bob this record would not have been as as fantastic, musically, as it turned out. Bob is just a fantastic musician. Marc LaFrance is also appearing, doing a lot of really cool background vocals and harmonies on this record. Once again, Marc LaFrance, you've heard his voice on many '80s and '90s recordings from MÖTLEY CRÜE to David Lee Roth to BON JOVI. Many other records, including some ANNIHILATOR records. And he's one of two people that were pretty famous vocalists. And they'd go around to different studios and work for different producers and engineers and bands laying down backing vocals. It was an honor once again to work with Marc. He's been on quite a few ANNIHILATOR records.

"Let's get back to the sound. This is definitely my biggest, greatest accomplishment as far as engineering and mixing goes. This is the best sounding mix and engineering that I've done in all the projects in my lifetime. And it was a freak of nature, this one. Just worked out perfectly and naturally. I was also lucky enough to have one of the most amazing recording and mixing studios I've ever been in, Watersound Studios in the UK once again. And I finally really got to use a lot of it! I wasn't restricted to a sort of metal sound. I was able to experiment with a lot of different sounds, but keep it rock and roll and use a lot of different cool guitars, Strats, Telecasters, Les Pauls, and many amplifiers. Whereas, for example, in my ANNIHILATOR career, I would a lot of times use one guitar, one pedal, one amplifier, one speaker cabinet, one microphone. For each record. On this one I could use 30 (!) and again, I have to pat myself on the back here because maybe not from a fan perspective but from an engineering and mixing perspective. This record has so many cool guitar tones and especially very subtle room sounds and effects on the vocals but not the kind of effects that changes the vocals, more like ads to the vocals in a space, it gives each vocal a kind of different room sound and different subtle effect on it. Trying to keep it as raw as possible, though, rock and roll.

"Lyrically, this one's gotta be one of my best I've ever done as well. Again, I wrote all the songs except for one, and that was a song that a lot of bands have covered. It was called '8675-309 Jenny' and it's a pretty darn popular song out of the '80s or I think it's '80s, should be '80s. And even David Lee Roth, I believe, has recently covered that song. Most bar bands, and you know, rock or pop circuit bands has played that song but I just had to do it. It was a song out of my youth, transitioning to metal, hard rock and metal. That song was so cool. The riff and especially the clean guitar part in the chorus. Instead of trying to do my own thing on this one, I really tried my best to just get really great guitar sounds on this one and try to keep it pretty true to the original version, was able to come up with a little bit of variation on the vocals. But I wanted to just sort of honor this song and try to do it as good and original sounding as possible. So, for the other 10 songs, I once again wrote everything and produced it, engineered and mixed. I hope you like it.

"It's personally my favorite record that I've done since 'King Of The Kill' or maybe 'Schizo Deluxe'. Those are two ANNIHILATOR records and that would be 1994 and 2005, respectively. So if I am correct, this is the best record I've done in 20 years and I hope everybody likes it. I love it. I hope you love it. Thank you so much."

"All That Jive" will be available as a tri-fold digipak CD on April 4 and on high-quality gatefold-sleeve vinyl (several colour options will be available, starting April 11).

The album release is preceded by a digital single release for the track "State Of Emergency", available from all major streaming platforms on March 24.

You can view the official lyric video for the single below.