Top 10 Facts About Jeff Waters

The Top Ten
1 Jeff Waters is a Canadian metal guitarist who founded metal band Annihilator at 18
2 He was a pioneer of Technical Thrash Metal

Annihilator's demo of 1985 (Welcome To Your Death) is either the first or the 2nd evidence of technical thrash metal. Five songs from this demo were included in Annihilator's debut album, released 4 years later (1989). This demo is true thrash with technical and progressive elements.
Watchtower's demo of 1984 (Meltdown) came out earlier, obviously, but it can be argued if it was exactly technical thrash metal. It sounds like prog metal with thrash elements.
So Jeff Waters was either the first or the second person who wrote and played several technical thrash metal songs.

3 In the early 90s Dave Mustaine offered him to join Megadeth as a lead guitarist but Jeff declined

Annihilator's debut album (Alice in Hell, 1989) obviously impressed Dave Mustaine but Jeff wanted to be independent and play own songs in his own band.

4 Jeff Waters is reported to have ghost-written many successful country/pop ballads for other artists

He is the guy who pretty much invented Technical Thrash Metal... He has to be very talented - such a broad spectrum of music genres.

5 He's a sought-after mixing/mastering engineer and producer (in 1994 he founded his own studio - Watersound Studios Inc.)
6 He's the primary composer and lyricist for Annihilator
7 He started taking classical and jazz guitar lessons at a very young age
8 He's a multi-instrumentalist and besides guitars, he can play bass, drums and percussion
9 He loves Flying V-shaped guitars and has his own guitar model: Epiphone Annihilation-V Guitars (in red or black), with custom pickups, kill switch and other modifications
10 He has provided backing and lead vocals
The Contenders
11 His favorite band is AC/DC
12 He has his own signature overdrive pedal called "the Jeff Waters Devil Drive by SolidGoldFX"
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