DEVILDRIVER Guitarist Interviewed By 'Toronto Metal Music' (Audio)

Toronto Metal Music conducted an interview with guitarist Mike Spreitzer of California metallers DEVILDRIVER on November 24 at the Sound Academy in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. You can now listen to the chat in two parts below.

In a recent interview with Loudwire, DEVILDRIVER frontman Dez Fafara stated about the band's split with longtime record label Roadrunner and new deal with Napalm Records, "When the whole folding of Roadrunner was happening, they were … letting a bunch of other people go. I had been there a long time. I think they decided, I decided, we all decided that it was just time to part ways. Napalm has a massive amount of passion for heavy metal, they love the band. When we met with the owner, he was like, 'I love the band.' He knew songs and it was like, okay, this is a guy who's entrenched in our music so we want him behind it. We're also with Roadrunner still overseas in Australia and New Zealand so it's good to be with them still over there. The United States label itself has changed and I foresee in the next year it's just going to fold completely in probably to Warner, I would imagine. With people in the U.K. that I've worked with forever, press people and others, when they lose their job, it's time to go, start over and I'm not afraid of that. A lot of people are afraid of moving into a new house, but it's awesome to do and decorate it new and make it happen again, make it feel alive so that's what's happening with DEVILDRIVER and Napalm right now. We're excited for the record, they're excited for the record. I think Napalm needs a flagship in the United States and I think we could be it for them and I think their press people and they think we could be it for them, too. We're going to go gunnin' with this next record and see the numbers. I'm predicting both higher sales and a higher chart position than what Roadrunner offered us. So we'll see."

Asked about the progress of the songwriting sessions for DEVILDRIVER's next album, Dez said, "[The] songs are all [musically] written. I'm six songs in right now, written [with lyrics]. We've got two covers that we're going to be doing. We're looking at a late fall [release]… sometime between late August and late September. Kind of hard to quote me right, because we're just looking for that release space, but I believe that's when the time is going to be. So this is the last time DEVILDRIVER will be in the United Stated at least until September, October of next year. We're taking a whole year away from the States to just let it marinate and then come on back on the new record."

He added, "Every record is different. That being said, I thought 'Pray For Villains' was kind of an out-of-the-box record for us. I thought 'Beast' was a weird out-of-the-box record for us. We've kind honed back in to where we are. This new record sounds a lot like the first three records. It's got an intense groove to it, and I'm really happy. The writing is going extremely well. That being said, I think we've laid back on our laurels right now and be like, 'We're a groove band.' The fans started calling us 'the groove machine, The California groove machine.' Everybody needs a title; we'll take that one and we're going to give them that on the new record, for sure."

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