Steve Bell of Australia's Time Off magazine recently conducted
an interview with DEVILDRIVER frontman Dez Fafara. A couple
of excerpts from the chat follow:
On being renowned globally in metal circles for both their
intense live shows and their willingness to write songs
combining hooks and melodies with brute force and power:
“I'm really fortunate in this band to be fronting a fantastic and
versatile bunch of musicians, and I'm raised on music with
hook. My favorite guys in music are people like Elvis,
Johnny Cash, Danzig, Ozzy, Phil Anselmo. Those guys all had
hooks in their music, and what we strive for is groove and hook,
and we want to make sure that our sound is defining, which
means we don't follow or sound like anything else.
That's really important for us right now, especially at this
early stage of the game.
“I'm not into that, and it was one of the same reasons that I
left COAL CHAMBER, because it started following into a scene
or a category and I wasn't into it. I was, like, 'Not only are
people not getting it, but I'm out of here man!
I'm going to do something that's way against what you
think I'm going to do.'
“With any kind of credible art — painting and sculpting are
other interests of mine — I can see who's selling out to
make a dime, and you can see the underground artists who
are doing something different. With those sort of people I
find myself gazing at their stuff going, 'Wow, I've never seen
this!' I've always been intrigued by that, and I know that
COAL CHAMBER did that in the beginning, and I know that
DEVILDRIVER is