MTV News (www.mtv.com) has issued the following report from Chris Harris and Jon Wiederhorn:

What many consider to be one of the best metal albums of 2005, CHIMAIRA's self-titled third offering sounded fist-tight, innovative and hungry.

Made after the 2004 departure of drummer Andols Herrick, who had grown tired of touring and wanted to return to school, the album was recorded in an atmosphere of discord, animosity and depression. And while Herrick's replacement, ex-DYING FETUS member Kevin Talley, was musically proficient, he and frontman Mark Hunter didn't get along on tour.

"Something didn't feel right, and we always wished Andols never left," explained Hunter. "It was like having a girlfriend leave you. There were a couple guys, including myself, who wanted to leave the band because we felt like we were out there killing ourselves for nothing, and it didn't look like anything was going to change."

Then came the Roadrunner United concert in New York at the end of 2005, an event that not only brought together past and present artists from Roadrunner Records, but also reunited Chimaira with Herrick. The drummer took the stage for two songs, and by the end of the night any thoughts of ditching the band for his degree had vanished in the din.

"When he was up there, his face lit up like a kid at a birthday party," Hunter said. "Right after that, he said to me, 'This is what I need to be doing in my life.' He rejoined the band soon after."

With Herrick back in the fold, Chimaira negotiated their way off Roadrunner, because they weren't seeing eye-to-eye with the label. Then the musicians sat down for a heart-to-heart to air their grievances and hatch a plan for the future. Realizing they all still shared the same vision and goals, Chimaira returned with renewed enthusiasm and a new level of determination, and started writing their fourth album Resurrection, which comes out March 6th on their new label, Ferret Music.

"We named the album Resurrection because that's exactly what it was," Hunter said. "When we talked, we got everything off our chests and out of our systems, and now we're friends again. And we're writing and playing better than ever."

While Chimaira was mostly written by guitarist Rob Arnold, this time Hunter and guitarist Matt DeVries shared the songwriting duties, resulting in a far more eclectic album that ranges from simple and driving to complex and meandering.

"It's a bit all over the place in a good way," Hunter said. "I think it's a good combination of [2003's] The Impossibility Of Reason and the self-titled record. But I think that there's so much more energy behind it because everyone was so excited to be back together."

In addition to being more diverse, many of the songs are also longer. Hunter said the average track length is six minutes, and one number clocks in at 10 minutes. At the same time, he insisted that the progressive arrangements don't detract from the hookiness of the album.

"It's super-catchy without being Fall Out Boy or something," Hunter said. "There are really fantastic hooks that people are gonna latch onto right away as opposed to the last album where it might take you a few listens to get what we were doing. And it's not one of those records where you get it right away, and then three days later you're done with it. This is something you're gonna want to listen to over and over again. I say that because I don't listen to our records, but this record is still in my CD player."

Chimaira recorded Resurrection in October and November with producer Jason Suecof (TRIVIUM, GOD FORBID)and Andy Sneap (MACHINE HEAD, ARCH ENEMY). Even though they didn't have a record contact when they started, for the first time ever they felt no pressure.

"It seemed like these songs took minutes to write," Hunter said. "We'd come in with a riff and the song would be done that day. We weren't over-analytical about anything. We just went for it and it was lots of fun. Me and Andols were making jokes because we were really into lifting weights, so, if a riff wasn't heavy enough, we would start pretending we were doing yoga. And once the riff got heavy, we would start doing some skull-crushers. We just had to get rid of what we called the estrogen riffs, and keep the stuff that really wrecked."

The band's jocularity continued outside of the studio. At one point, Hunter even pushed the wheelchair-bound Suecof into a swimming pool — not that he didn't ask for it.

"He's so talented and he has a great ear and a gift for getting sh-- out of you that you didn't know you had, but he has really bad ADD," Hunter explained. "The dude would say, 'OK, we're gonna start at 1,' then he'd roll in at 4 o'clock and go, 'Oh, I didn't even know we were recording today. OK, we'll I'm just gonna go make some food, smoke a cigarette and sit on MySpace for a while.' And we'd be like, 'Are you f---ing kidding me? Get to work, a--hole.' So, we had to wheel him into the studio more than we'd wanted to, but it was all worth it for what he brought out of us."