WILL HAVEN Return With New Music

The reunited WILL HAVEN have uploaded a new track, entitled "Handle Bars to Freedom", to their MySpace.com page. Check it out at this location.

In a recent interview with The Sacramento Bee, the WILL HAVEN members discussed their break-up in 2003 and their decision to reunite nearly three years later.

I was just getting burned out," singer Grady Avenell, 33, said. "I had just got remarried and didn't want to spend time away from my wife. I wanted to try something different."

Avenell didn't talk much with his former bandmates in the post-WILL HAVEN years. It wasn't anything personal — the singer had just settled down.

They started talking reunion when Avenell called guitarist Jeff Irwin to be a job reference.

"I told him that my brother kept asking when we were going to get back and play shows," said Avenell. "And Jeff's all, 'Funny you mentioned that. Everyone keeps mentioning that to me.' It kept rolling from there."

The band got together in mid-December, but no one was sure if that first rehearsal would click. All of the original band members were on board, including drummer Mitch Wheeler, plus GHOSTRIDE guitarist Cayle Hunter.

"When Grady came in, there was some apprehension at first," said Irwin, 32. "We weren't sure how he'd come across. But when he started singing again, it was like the old days again. This is Grady's calling right here. His cadence was right on, his voice was perfect."

Once the word got out that WILL HAVEN had reunited, Irwin received an e-mail from DEFTONES singer Chino Moreno that said "Deftones - Will Haven 2006" in the subject line.

The idea was to include WILL HAVEN on the Taste of Chaos tour, a hard-rock package tour that's being headlined by the DEFTONES.

The timing didn't work, but there's hope that WILL HAVEN will join the DEFTONES for a later tour.

"We'd taken them to Europe (back in the mid-1990s) and they went over there and killed it, like electric fire," said DEFTONES drummer Abe Cunningham. "It was a Sacto thing. When I heard they were back together, I was like, 'Let's do it.' I'm just happy they're back together. They need to rock."

"They wear their emotions on their sleeves and it's not false or pretentious," Cunningham said of WILL HAVEN's music. "It's brutal and really, really gnarly, but it has texture to it. It hits a nerve. They've been bitten by the beast."