DEVILDRIVER Drummer Says Next Album Will Have 'Huge Emphasis' On 'Groove'

On October 31, Resident Rock Star conducted an interview with drummer John Boecklin of California metallers DEVILDRIVER. You can now watch the chat below.

Asked about the musical direction of DEVILDRIVER's next album, which is tentatively due in September 2013, Boecklin said, "It's a step in a different direction from our last record [2011's 'Beast'], where a huge emphasis on it is based around groove. We didn't try to just do some aggressive, over-the-top, fast album, like we did on the last one. We tried to link it to a technical, slower album — not like 'doom' slow or anything… But the album is definitely something like you can nod your head to. And we really thought about live settings, what would go over good live, which we never really did on the past two albums; we just kind of wrote what we wanted to. Not that we didn't do that this time, but we just thought, looking back at our setlist, what songs worked live and trying to think about songs in that kind of vein."

In a recent interview with Ned of the WGRD 97.9 FM radio station in Grand Rapids, Michigan, DEVILDRIVER frontman Dez Fafara stated about the band's split with longtime record label Roadrunner and new deal with Napalm Records, "[It was] just time to do it, I believe. Roadrunner's gotten sold out to Warner Brothers; they've become a whole new animal. The guy, Monte Conner, who signed us [to Roadrunner], isn't over there anymore, a lot of the other bands aren't over there anymore, and it's gonna start dissipating as they go. They're picking up more classic artists — I mean, they're starting to deal with LYNYRD SKYNYRD and RATT and this and that — and it was just time to go. We needed another label, someone who understood what we did. Napalm came to the table and said, 'You know what? Look, we love the music and we're behind it.'"

He continued, "We were with Roadrunner a long time — they did a great job with my career; I'd been with them since late '94, so I owed them a lot, I owed them a great deal. But when the internal things change and they start moving the furniture around in the house and everything and it's unrecognizable, then it's time to move locations, which is what we did. And it's important for a metal band to have a label that understands the music, understands what we wanna do, the kind of touring we do and wants to get behind it. DEVILDRIVER is rarely off the road, and so it's important for a label to be behind it when you're on the road. You want them to do the same work that you're doing. Napalm seems like a great fit and we're looking forward to seeing how this record does."