DEVILDRIVER Frontman: 'We're Not Gonna Make You Wait Three Or Four Years For A Record'

Matthew Lambert of Impact magazine recently conducted an interview with vocalist Dez Fafara of Santa Barbara, California metallers DEVILDRIVER. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Impact: Your newest album is called "Pray for Villains". What does this mean to you and could you expand upon some of the themes of the album?

Dez: "Pray for Villains" was kind of a tongue-in-cheek title when it comes to the good guy letting you down and the bad-ass in black taking care of the situation, that's basically what that means. The owl concept is because the owl is both revered and feared in different cultures so it's a villain, it's a hero, thus in the song: "They pray for their villains / When their heroes let them down" [from "Pray for Villains"] so it all kind of ties in.

Impact: It's arguably your heaviest album to date and its debuted at number 35 on the U.S. Billboard. What do you think it is about DEVILDRIVER that inspires such affection?

Dez: It's part and parcel due to us being proficient at our touring and prolific in our writing. We're not gonna make you wait three or four years for a record. Some bands do do that and it just doesn't work for us so we stay on the road and we keep giving music and our show never wavers even if we're tired or sick or hungry or whatever, the show is the most important thing. I'm known for, even if I'm sick, not cancelling and the rest of the guys are the same way. You know what you're gonna get when you come and we're not gonna let you down. We put together good bills like this one, so from start to finish you get your money's worth.

Impact: Your previous band climbed to fame quite quickly whereas this time around the process has been more steady. How do you think that's affected things now?

Dez: Well, even the road with COAL CHAMBER was a long one before we started to really pick up steam. I think this band has such a road work ethic, it's very important, and we're doing it the right way. I started all over again and we opened up for everybody who ever opened for COAL CHAMBER. They took us out, which we're very thankful for. We just keep putting in the road work and we all know that in the end it'll pay off and I'm not talking monetarily, I'm saying that even now the shows keep getting bigger and more are sold out and that's really what you want when you're in a band — you wanna see people coming out.

Impact: At the Download festivals you've attempted to break the record for the largest circle pit. Where did this idea come from and was this year's attempt successful?

Dez: It was a tongue-in-cheek thing between the band members. Somebody said we should ride in and try to do it and the first time was under the tent, there was a lot of people and they said they didn't know how to speculate how big it was. We didn't contact the Guinness Book of Records people for the last Download but apparently they showed up. It was 80,000 people and everybody was divided in four so it was kind of hard to get one big pit. It was going off nonetheless, there were kids all the way at the top doing it. For us it's just an appreciation thing, it's something that the fans give us. Somebody said to me the other day in an interview, "How do you create that?" and I said like "I don't. We don't. They do."

Read the entire interview from Impact magazine.