DEVILDRIVER Frontman: 'We're Booked Until May 2012'

Metal As Fuck recently conducted an interview with vocalist Dez Fafara of Santa Barbara, California metallers DEVILDRIVER. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

On DEVILDRIVER's constant touring:

"When you're on tour as much as us, eight days [off between tours] feels like about twenty-four hours. By the time you get home and unpack, you leave again.

"We have a tour schedule that rivals any band out there. I don't think there's a band out there that tours as hard as we do. If they do, they go for a month-and-a-half to two months at a time — we don't do that.

"The only significant break we're gonna take is after we tour the States in January with SUFFOCATION, GOATWHORE and THY WILL BE DONE — a proper metal tour. Then we'll take some time off — about a month or two — to write and get in the studio. Then in March we're going to do some shows in the U.K. But what we want to do is prepare for record five."

On DEVILDRIVER's next studio album:

"Record five with this band, and I've said it before, even with record five, six, seven, eight and nine, will continue to get better. Not a lot of bands can say that and not a lot of bands have done that. Most bands, by the time they've done that amount of records, they're either over it or they're not giving you the anticipation of the record release that they should. But we want to keep DEVILDRIVER fans on their feet. So every two years we're going to release a record and just continue to tour like we do, and we're booked until May 2012. Then we're going to take about six months off. That'll be the most time I've had off in about fourteen years."

On how the band's last album, "Pray for Villains", was received by the fans and the press:

"It's been really well received all over the world at this point and we appreciate all the support we've received so far."

"I never have any expectations or perceptions when it comes to [our] art; I just do art for the sake of doing art. I knew that we were stretching the boundaries and growing our sound a little bit — I knew we were going to give [our fans] something with a bit of growth and they were anticipating it. We feel very strongly that we made the right move with our music. As for how it was going to be received or perceived, I'm not that kind of guy. I'm doing it for the love of music, really."

On the breakup of his previous band, COAL CHAMBER:

"Everyone was addicted to speed [by the end]. When you have people around you up for four days at a time, they can't do their jobs. At that point, it's time to leave. If you're unhappy in a job, or a marriage? Leave.

"I can't say for certain that we'd still have been together if those things hadn't happened — but we may have been. It certainly didn't change because the tide was changing on the band; we were bigger than ever, we were selling out shows. There wasn't any feedback on nu-metal; it wasn't an 'ugly' word at the time.

"I simply left because the friends that I loved in the band were doing drugs and ruining their lives. By me singing on stage, I was giving them the money and the opportunity to destroy themselves. To save my friends, I bailed. That's all I can say. I mean we all talk now. They're all off of hard drugs. Because COAL CHAMBER broke up, they got to save their own lives. I basically left overnight. I couldn't take it. I just didn't want to be involved in that."

Read the entire interview from Metal As Fuck.