Before he was the frontman of agro globe-trotters DevilDriver, Dez Fafara fronted the menacing nu-metal act Coal Chamber, whose mixture of goth, sleaze, and bounding circus riffs set them at least two steps to the left of all the other bands trying so hard to sound edgy and tough. And while Dez now has DevilDriver to center his focus on, he recently admitted that a new Coal Chamber album wasn’t entirely out of the question.
“I’m not gonna say yes or no,” Dez told Metal Hammer (via Louder). “I’m not gonna say no, because we’ve all spoken. The main thing for me is that the relationship is all good after numerous fallouts in the beginning and after sone stuff went horribly wrong when we got back together to release [2015’s] Rivals. The vibe in that camp is very cool at the moment, and we all have each other’s backs. I wouldn’t put it past us, but right now I’m definitely concentrating on DevilDriver.”
Dez was also asked by a fan if it felt ‘silly’ to ‘slap on spooky make-up again’ when Coal Chamber returned in 2015. Not only does Dez say no, he goes on to comment about how much he appreciates his facepaint days looking back on them.
“No I loved it to be honest with you!” says Fafara. “I’m a punk rock kid, so that lends itself to eyeliner and all the other shit. Now I look at what’s popular right now, looking at some of the bands out there, it looks like they could be taking from what Coal Chamber did. I see Avatar and think, ‘Thank god we did what we did back in the day, or maybe there would be no ground breaking open for a band like that.’ Back in the day when we broke that out, there were only a few bands doing it. When the harsh critics got the gold records thrown at them, they understood we were doing something right.”
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Words by Chris Krovatin
