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These days you only need to speak with Dez Fafara for a few moments before you pick up on his enthusiasm for playing with his new band Devildriver and the fact that all is well in Dez’s world. Even suffering through a cold and fever while on the road doesn’t seem to get his spirits down. He jokingly refers to going from a band with a Mack truck and two tour buses to touring in an RV with 9 people and how it reminds him of why he got into the rock n roll game in the first place, “the first time I got a tour, I was like a kid at Christmas, seeing a Christmas tree for the first time. And this RV pulled up for this tour and it was the same thing to me, I was like let’s go”.  It only takes hearing his tone of voice and you can’t help but catch on to the fact that Dez is just where he wants to be and he is loving every minute of it. 

I had the opportunity to speak with Dez a few days ago about Devildriver, the new music, what it’s all about and a few other topics. Usually a publicist that works for the band or their record company will set up interviews, but this time was a little different. A mutual friend called me up and said that he noticed we didn’t have anything about Devildriver up on antiMUSIC and wondered why since they seem to be right up our alley. I explained that we had a CD review in the works but he asked “how would you like to interview Dez?” Naturally I jumped at the opportunity and a couple days later I was able to talk with Dez on the phone while the band was on their way to a concert in Chicago. 

Very few artists get the opportunity to start all over again and succeed. Dez made a name for himself with Coal Chamber but he really wanted to explore the heavier music he loves. He explains why Coal Chamber had to come to an end and he felt he had to move on to his ultimate dream of Devildriver, “The thing with Coal Chamber is after our first album they moved in directions I really didn’t want to go. The heaviness in Coal Chamber was always probably coming from me, that was my influence and the last Coal Chamber album I had said that I really want to do a heavier album, otherwise I don’t really know what’s gonna happen here and to tell you the truth for the last four or five years the relationships were so strained with all the members with different management changes and this and that. It really was just no fun anymore. And since it was such a democracy and everybody kind of running the business their own way, I didn’t like that either. I wanted to start something that was mine, start it with a group of guys, start it all over and just see what I could do and actually do the kind of music when I used to come back in the bus that I would listen to, which is heavy, brutal, aggressive, just toss around driven music. “ 

So that was the basis of Devildriver. I asked Dez how the band formed. “I was doing the last Coal Chamber album ‘Dark Days’ and I was at night, going home making demos for the Devil Driver stuff," Dez explains. "I meet Evan Pitts, I live in Santa Barbara, which is a couple hours out of L.A. I go down to eat at this little place in the morning time and this guitarist Evan left me a note on a napkin that just said, ‘I heard you were in town. If you want, let’s get together and jam one day’. And I ended up calling him, we became friends for about a year, a year and half, and one night he picked me up from the ‘Dark Days’ sessions down in L.A. and we were driving back home and I said ‘We’re doing this album here and I haven’t even seen my band members in like 3 weeks’ and I go ‘it’s not fun for me anymore. I want to write music’, so we started. The rest of the band, we formed pretty much organically from other bands around the area that kind of said ‘that drummer’s great’, ‘that bass player’s cool’. It just so happened that all those guys were childhood friends, they’d grown up together and all moved over from Boston to Santa Barbara. So that’s kind of a weird coincidence there.” 

It sounds like Dez had found a better chemistry with his new band mates than he had in Coal Chamber, so I posed the question to him why the formula in Devildriver seems to work better on a personal level. Dez explained, “You know it is because there is one leader and that’s me. And not only learning how to make sure that everything gets handled correctly but I learned how to be a really extremely good listener and these cats know their meddle and they know their music and so yeah it’s really cool, the chemistry is really cool.” 

With the history of Devildriver out of the way, I asked Dez how the current tour with Superjoint ritual was going. “The tour is incredible,” Dez said enthusiastically. “Seven and a half weeks with Superjoint Ritual and Morbid Angel, it’s been incredible. The crowds have been nuts. I’ve never personally from my past experienced gigs like this, so it’s amazing. And touring with those guys is really fun and like today we’ve got an off day, were driving getting ready to all meet up and go out for a big group dinner, all the bands. And then we’re gonna play in Chicago tomorrow night (Tues Nov 25), then we all fly home for seven or eight days and we’re gonna all go out again together. I don’t know if it’s with Morbid Angel but I know Super Joint and us are gonna go out and tackle the west coast for like 3 or 4 weeks in December too." 

During a stop on the tour Dez had a unique opportunity to film a “Day in the Life” type special for the show Uranium which airs on Fuse TV.  I asked about it and Dez said they did it “for the New Jersey Metal Fest, there was like 40 bands there. It was incredible. Superjoint, Danzig, a lot of people and they approached me [Uranium] and they just stuck a microphone in my face and I had like a 101 degree fever that night, fever was full blown, I’ve still got a cold pretty bad. They put me out on the floor and I went around interviewed cool people. I talked to a bunch of kids, followed them around. Really cool that Uranium would give us that kind of a break, as well as they did an interview with us and they’ve been spinning our video. It’s all cool.” 

He said that Uranium coming to him to do the special reminded him of the fact that “when you start all over man, and you change your whole life and you try to make a life change for the better, you really kind of see who your friends are and who is not. And they [Uranium] definitely came to show their face as a friend.”

I asked Dez if he knew when fans could tune in to see any of the footage but he wasn’t quite sure of the exact schedule, “I think at the end of December they are gonna use some of it,” Dez explained. “And also in January there is another segment of the interview that is gonna run. “

Then our conversation turned towards the new album. I asked Dez if the assumption that it was a concept album was correct. He said, “You know it is kind of in an essence. When I wrote it, it didn’t start out like that but when I sat back and listened to all the lyrics, I said to myself ‘wow, this is what I’m actually saying is that everybody sells their soul for something.’ If you’re a dentist you’re working constantly or if you’re a doctor. Like me, I’m working constantly on the road, I sold my soul to be a heavy metal musician and that’s what the album is basically about”. 

Then I asked Dez to take us through track by track and fill us in a little on the meanings behind the songs. 

Nothing's Wrong? – “Basically there is nothing wrong with the way I live my life today. And that’s just pretty much trying to empower people to go about their lives and lead their own lives, not let people tell you how to lead your life or push you around or throw you around. And if it starts happenin then you can make a change for the better.” 

I Could Care Less - “The same kind of thing man. If you’re gonna be a s*** talker, if you’re gonna have something negative to say around me, I could care less because I know that I’ve gotta win in what I do personally in my life, I’ve gotta make myself happy, first.” 

Die (And Die Now) – “Here’s the thing, a lot of albums are like 30 songs of ‘Die (and Die Now)’, that kind of emotion of hate and I wanted to put it in one song and one song only. It’s not directed towards anybody, it’s just directed towards that feeling of like, you know everyone’s got a couple people in their life that you just wish weren’t really on the face of the earth.” 

I Dreamed I Died – “True thing, I woke up 3:30 in the morning sweating my ass off and my was like ‘what’s wrong?’ and I had a dream I died but everyone was saying to me ‘don’t worry, you’ve done good, you’ve done good in what you’ve done.’ The problem with me is I don’t think I’m done yet.  It was right on the heals of leaving Coal Chamber, it must have been something inside of me, you know the frightening part of starting a whole new career and not knowing what’s gonna happen, so it makes you wake up in the middle of the night with the sweats. But what was cool was in the dream everyone was telling me I was doing a good job and I was trying to wake up because I wanted start, I knew I had Devildriver.” 

Cry For Me Sky (Eulogy Of The Scorned) – “’Cry For Me Sky’ is kind of like a eulogy song of my life man. I mean those lyrics right there are exactly how I live my life and it’s exactly how I want people to remember me, which is those lyrics right there.” 

The Mountain – “That’s also about starting something new and trying to bring something to the forefront that other people aren’t doing and it’s kind of saying, you know, the chorus is all you outsiders, you know get away from me. All you haters, all you liars, get away from me because there’s been a lot of negative s*** happening in the last four or five years of my life, so I just had to get all of that s*** away from me.” 

Knee Deep – “It’s about being on the road, knee deep in the s***, all together in the pit. It’s about night after night doing shows and staying true to yourself. There is a whole common theme, you can hear the common theme through the album.” 

What Does It Take (To Be A Man) – “ I was raised in a blue-collar working class family, I saw my father up at 5 breaking his back, my mom doing the same thing. I was working since I was ten-years-old on a construction site during summer time and stuff. That’s what that song’s about, it’s about; what does it take to be a man? It takes a hell of a lot of work and strength and you gotta believe in yourself and so I tried to put it into one song.” 

Swinging The Dead – “I don’t even know where that song came from, the lyrics just like popped into my head man. For me I was picturing kids in the pit and stuff, so I couldn’t nail it down, I could say that ‘Swinging the Dead’ is about this, it’s just basically about ‘get it up, pick it up, let’s get this place moving, let’s see the floor swinging right now’. 

I interject, “so maybe about what your feeling from onstage subconsciously?” 

Dez responds, “yeah, you know, and that’s cool too. I’ve never been asked what ‘Swinging the Dead’ is about, but it’s been on soundtracks and everything else and now I’m trying to figure out what it’s about right here on the phone.” 

Revelation Machine – “that’s just talking about my band, it’s saying I’ve got something here and I’m bringin’ it. You know, ‘Revelation Machine, we’re just bringin’ it’ and I don’t think we’re gonna stop anytime soon.” 

Meet The Wretched – “It’s going downtown and having a drink with your friends. Having a drink with your friends, someone getting in a bar fight, having those mornings where you wake up ‘what happened man? We had such a killer time!’ That’s just plain and simple. 

Devil's Son – That was the first lyrical song that I wrote and that’s all about me, I knew the record label was gonna hear that song on the demo first and that’s why the lyric is in there, ‘I am the one, I am the one that you need,” you know to try to give myself another record deal and keep my family alive. 

Having covered the album, I had a big question I have been wanting to ask someone in band that's been out on tour recently, so I asked Dez “So you’re on the frontlines and a lot of people right now are saying ‘rock’s dead’ but do you even see that on the road?” 

He responded, “The whole industry as a whole is dead, I just think that I’m part of one of the bands that’s not pandering to the kind of sellout radio song in order to support myself. I have no problem with moving family into an apartment and getting heavier and like you said going out on the frontlines and I’ve seen the crowds ever night come out and when either Philip or I or anyone talks about heavy music on the stage you can hear the kids go crazy, they want it.  I’ve seen it with Superjoint and I’ve seen it with us. I’m just proud to be part of a new movement right now.”

Dez's passion comes through loud and clear but I had to ask him, "you’ve been around for a while in the business, when you first started out, when you first wanted to get into music, do you have the same drive or rather reasons behind it now that you did back then?” 

Dez explained, “I’ve always wanted to do it because I love being on stage and I love connecting with people and I love music, since I was a kid I’d fall asleep listening to music. So the reason that I got into were at first, ‘hey I want to be on the road, I want to know what that’s like. I want to play in front of people every night. Maybe we’ll make some money and we’ll have a good time.’  Yeah, I’m still in it for the same things, it hasn’t changed. I mean, I went from 2 buses and a Mack truck full of equipment to I’m in an RV right now with 9 people, taking 14 hour drives, sleeping on the floor. Starting over, it’s like I haven’t lost any of that same essence. The first time I got a tour, I was like a kid at Christmas, seeing a Christmas tree for the first time. And this RV pulled up for this tour and it was the same thing to me, I was like let’s go.  So I’m nothing but built for roaming, I’ve got it in my blood and it’s not gonna stop any time soon. 

I commented that it sounds like he has a new lease on life with Devildriver and he responded, “I’m trying, that’s why it’s unfortunately that going along with that new lease on life I also have to like pick up the baggage of a guy like Morgan Rose, who now all of a sudden has somebody else in band wants to get in on it too. It’s unfortunately but in life nothing can ever be perfect. At least most of the bad situations I was ever in, I’ve gotten out of them and I’m starting a new lease on life. But the question about drive, I love that because I wake up every day like ‘where are we? What town are we in? Ok, what time do we go on?’  Those are my first questions, not 'where’s the food?' 'Where’s the this or that?' You know, 'what time do we go on stage every night?'” 

We did discuss the Morgan Rose of Sevendust controversy a bit at that point and Dez seemed a bit puzzled of where the animosity came from but he is content to end it right here. As far as he’s concerned he’s done talking about it.  (We won’t go into that portion of the interview here, this article is about Devildriver and their music not the feud. If you really want to hear more of Dez’s take on the whole feud you can click here.) 

Leaving the feud topic aside, I asked Dez what he hopes people take away from his music. He responded, “I want them to know that there is somebody out there that is not selling out. And there is only a few band’s doing it right now and I’m proud to say that we’re one of them. I want them to take away strength and power and I want them to love heavy and aggressive music and if you love heavy and aggressive music in your car, at your house, what ever. That’s what I want them to take away, that we gave them something good and when they come to see our show, I want them to walk away going ‘f***, that band.. that band just tore my head off! I paid good money to see ‘em and they gave me a good show.’” 

Judging by reviews of the album and the live shows, Dez and Devildriver are doing just that. So I then asked Dez, “What’s next for you and Devildriver?” 

 “We’re gonna keep touring,” Dez answered. “We’re gonna do this next Superjoint tour, talking about going over to Europe in February, possibly Australia in January. And we’re gonna tour probably up til September of next year and then come off and do another album. I’m already starting to write for it right now.”

Always thinking ahead, Dez seems to have a pretty good idea of how he wants the next and future albums to sound like. When asked what fans can expect from the next album Dez said, “It’s getting heavier. It’s gonna get heavier, it’s gonna be more brutal, it’s gonna get probably more technical. I’m gonna try to do a few more things vocally but it’s gonna be heavier, that’s all I can say. Probably heavier, faster than everything that this one is, we all want to achieve like ‘that album!’ that we know we can do. I love this album right now, it’s getting great reviews and it’s cool that people are picking up on it but we’re looking forward to six-seven-eight albums of good material for people and hopefully they’ll keep buying it, keep supporting us on the road.”

It does appear that the kids are going crazy for the heavier side of Dez with Devildriver.  The group’s debut album is currently sitting on top of the R&R metal specialty chart.  In early November, Devildriver was the most added to metal radio. So the buzz is building and for good reason, as Roadrunner recently pointed out in a press release, one of their A&R people handed off a early demo of the Devildriver cd to a fellow employee with the pronouncement, "Listen to this...it will make you s*** your pants." 

As I said in the beginning it only takes a few moments of talking to Dez to pick up on the fact that he’s right where he wants to be and is loving every minute of it. For those who have already caught the buzz of Devildriver, hopefully you took away a bit more understanding about the band and the meanings behind the music after hearing this little bit of background from Dez. For those who have yet to check out Devildriver, hopefully this article will inspire you to check out the tunes for yourself. Because at the end of the day, that’s what matters, the music. Dez really does appear to have achieved his musical dream with Devildriver. Hopefully, Dez’s prediction will come true and we’ll have lots more “brutal”, "agressive" and “heavy” music from Devildriver in the years to come. For now, you gotta check out Devildriver’s debut because it really will “make you s*** your pants!"

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