Dez Comments On Upcoming Devildriver Album
Ask any member of any metal band what fans can expect from whatever it is they're working on at the moment, and they'll usually come back at you with one of three possible responses: The material is either the most "brutal," "extreme" or "hardest" they - or anyone else, for that matter - have ever churned out. But DevilDriver frontman Dez Fafara took things a bit further in describing his band's next opus.
"When you hear this record, you're gonna sh--," he promised. Tempting as that already sounds, he didn't stop there. "In a time when art of this sort is in total despair and everybody sounds the same, and everybody's trying to sound like Metallica, Pantera or Iron Maiden, we're making a definite move towards our own individuality, and it's definitely gonna show on this record. We're onto something here, and it's an exciting and inspiring time for me, man. Seriously."
Well then, the next question is obviously when this yet-untitled aural laxative is going to be out. Fafara assures this spring, but no definite release date has been etched in stone yet. One thing's for sure: DevilDriver didn't waste any time tracking the LP at Sonic Ranch studio, located just outside El Paso, Texas. Fafara said that initially, the band wanted to take two months in the studio to get the album just right. But thanks to producer Jason Suecof (God Forbid, Bury Your Dead) and engineer Mark Lewis (Trivium, Seemless), the album should be in the bag before the weekend.
"It's unbelievable, man," said Fafara, who fronted Coal Chamber before doing time with the Driver. "We tracked what we thought would be two months' [worth of work] in 22 days, and we have two or three more days of vocals. So it looks like we're gonna be tracking the whole record in 31 days. ... In all the records I've done with many different producers over the years, these guys manage to capture some intense vibes.
"It feels like a train moving forward, the way they capture it," he continued. "Rather than just laying down the songs, there's this feeling to 'em, man. They have managed to capture DevilDriver in such an intense, raw form that ... I mean, this feels like the album we should have always made. Everybody likes to say that, but this surely does feel that way."
DevilDriver wrote 13 tracks for the follow-up to 2005's The Fury of Our Maker's Hand but plan to release an album with just 11 cuts, Fafara said. That will include "Cattle Call," "Damning the Heavens," "The Last Kind Words," "Monsters of the Deep" and the likely first single from the LP, "Bound by the Moon." Fafara says he's a fan of every single tune they've written: "I mean, we can't find a B-side, which is the most killer thing about this record. Usually it's obvious. You play 'em back and you go, 'Eh, that's a good song, but it doesn't fit with the rest.' Right now, we can't find [one]."
While Fafara said DevilDriver's self-titled 2003 debut sounded - at least to him - like a band trying to find itself, and The Fury of Our Maker's Hand was just the next step in the band's evolution, this next one's a rager.
"My bass player [Jon] Miller walked in the other night and said, 'This record is sincerely pissed - pissed like I've never heard you,' " Fafara explained. "And the music these guys brought in was really thought-out, with lots and lots of guitar work, lots of solos, lots of melody that can be carried off without clean vocals and still sound killer to the ear. We didn't want to carry anything off in a wimpy way. We wanted it to be brutal all the way through. The musicianship has definitely stepped up, and if I ever had to go do soul-searching for lyrics, I did for this record. I just opened up the floodgates, because it was time. People are just gonna go, 'Holy sh--, what a brave move,' when they hear this record."
Thanks to Chris Harris and Jon Wiederhorn from MTV.com
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