DEVILDRIVER Frontman Would 'Definitely' Play Some Shows With COAL CHAMBER

Kristen Dunleavy of myYearbook recently conducted an interview with DEVILDRIVER/ex-COAL CHAMBER frontman Dez Fafara. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

myYearbook: Would you ever consider taking time off of touring?

Dez: We do, but we put out a record about every two years. If you're going to make people wait longer than that, there's no point to it; you gotta tour on your current record. When we do take time off, it's three weeks here, it's a month there, but we do get enough time to get rested. We like the road.

myYearbook: You seem to be writing constantly. What's been inspiring your songwriting lately?

Dez: We're writing right now. We write every day. I get up every morning and these guys will already have four or five tunes written as well. It's just what you do; if you're a musician, you write. There's no reason for bands to make you wait three, four, five years to make a record, especially now in this day and age.

myYearbook: Are you aware of the harsh words from metal heads and metalcore scene kids about DEVILDRIVER?

Dez: No, I don't care about any of that. We don't fit in; we're the round peg in a square hole. You can't put a genre on us. We're not death metal, we're far from metalcore and we're not this new American metal. We've got our own influences because we listen to such a varied style of music; everything from goth to punk to metal. Different styles will make different sorts of music. But I don't listen to people, especially critics, like one dude behind a computer who has probably traveled 20 yards out of his house. When you travel the world and you see fans every day, you don't listen to one guy on the computer.

myYearbook: Do you pay attention to chart positions, and do you ever feel pressure to outdo yourselves musically?

Dez: The old model of the record industry is dying. I just had myself taken off SoundScan; I don't want to be sent reports. It doesn't matter; it doesn't translate to who has your record. I know firsthand, I have three young boys at home and they don't own any CDs. If they want a record, they get it off iTunes. The old model will be squashed, they're gonna have to come up with a new one. A band should be releasing maybe one song a month for two years straight, and that'll be your record. Whole, inclusive records don't work anymore, the model doesn't work anymore. It's broken completely. They need to go back to the single model, where people get a single once a month and they get excited about it or once every two weeks, if the band is prolific and proficient enough with their writing, which we definitely are. When we go into the recording process, we write anywhere from 15 to 25 songs.

myYearbook: Would you ever get back together with COAL CHAMBER?

Dez: Yeah, definitely, I would do shows with them. It's been 10 years, we put the past behind us. Meegs and my drummer Mike are clean off hard drugs. The reason I left COAL CHAMBER was because they got into methamphetamines and I just can't be around that kind of thing. I'm a family man and I don't do any hard drugs. I had to leave, which sucked, but taking the money out of their pocket made them stop and get clean. We've been friends for years; they come out to DEVILDRIVER shows. You can see videos on YouTube of Meegs doing "Loco" with DEVILDRIVER. I don't know if I'd entertain a reunion, but I would entertain some shows, definitely.

Read the entire interview from myYearbook.