TimeOff.com Steve Bell recently spoke to DEVILDRIVER vocalist Dez Fafara. The following is an excerpt from the story:

DevilDriver - Hooked On Metal

When vocalist Dez Fafara pulled the pin on COAL CHAMBER - the nu-metal act he’d fronted for a decade - back in 2003, few predicted that he would find his feet so quickly, if at all. Yet in a short period of time he’s made giant strides with his brutal new act DevilDriver, who have just released their third album The Last Kind Words.

They’ve become 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, a trait not often explored in the current scene.

“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,” Fafara explains. “My favourite 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 doing that now, so as long as I can hold true to that then that’s kind of my flag and my mantra right now.”

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