COAL CHAMBER To Play First Los Angeles-Area Show In More Than 10 Years

COAL CHAMBER, the reformed '90s alt-metal band fronted by current DEVILDRIVER singer Dez Fafara, is in talks with the House Of Blues in West Hollywood, California to play its first Los Angeles-area show in over 10 years.

COAL CHAMBER played its first reunion dates in late February and early March as part of Australia's Soundwave Festival.

In a 2011 interview with Australia's Loud magazine, Dez stated about how the COAL CHAMBER reunion came about, "In '05, Meegs [Miguel Rascón, guitar] started coming around. He apologized to my wife for the way things went down with COAL CHAMBER, because when COAL CHAMBER split up I had to move my family into a one-bedroom apartment and start all over. So when he apologized to my wife, I thought, 'Well, OK, he's got a big heart inside him. And he's clean off the hard drugs now, let's see if this goes awhile.' So let's fast forward a few years to '09, he and Mikey [Mike Cox, drums] were still clean off hard drugs, Meegs came out and did 'Loco' onstage with DEVILDRIVER. After that he gave me a hug onstage and in my ear he said, 'Let's do this again.'"

Asked how he feels about performing the COAL CHAMBER songs again, Dez said, "[Meegs and Mikey] been clean off hard drugs, they've got their lives together, I've got my life with DEVILDRIVER, we miss playing together onstage. I miss... Those guys have got a serious fucking aura on stage, no doubt about it. I miss that. I miss those songs. I miss everything about it. . . It's ten years later, everybody's fucking one hundred percent focused, and we're coming down for one reason only, and that's to own the day and take everybody to the bank. Period."

Regarding why neither of the two former COAL CHAMBER bassists — Nadja Peulen or Rayna Foss — is involved in the band's reunion, Dez told Full Metal Jackie in a separate interview, "Rayna was not [asked to be a part of it]. Rayna has been out of the band for a very long time. We did speak to Nadja. She has other things going and it wasn't really in the headspace where we were at as a band. We found Chela; she's Canadian and she's a bad-ass player. She's been playing for nearly 12 years. She plays five-string and it's going to be good to have her on bass. She grew up with COAL CHAMBER. She's only 26-27 years old. She knows the songs, and just hearing her on the phone, the excitement [in her voice], that's really what I wanted brought to the table. Where Meegs and Mikey and I am right now, we're really excited so we needed someone that filled that excitement drawer and she did for sure; she's stoked."

Performance - February 26 at Olympic Park in Sydney, Australia during this year's Soundwave Festival: