DEZ FAFARA Explains Why He Thinks COAL CHAMBER’s ‘Rivals’ Album Was Released Nearly A Decade Too Early

In a new interview with Australia’s Heavy, COAL CHAMBER frontman Dez Fafara was asked to elaborate on his comment that the band’s 2015 album “Rivals” was released nearly a decade “too early”. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “True story. Nu metal wasn’t in the place it was ten, twelve years ago. If we would have released ‘Rivals’ today, and I’m telling you, anybody watching this that gives a shit about COAL CHAMBER, go after this and listen to ‘Rivals’. I mean, it’s got Al Jourgensen from MINISTRY on it. It’s a fucking great record. And I just think we released it at a time in our lives when we didn’t have our shit straight, so the band wasn’t cohesive, but the music was. And obviously the whole nu metal thing or whatever hadn’t really swung around. I mean, some bands had remained large — KORN, et cetera — but it hadn’t really swung around. Now we do meet-and-greets and it’s all 20-year-old kids that were born when we fucking broke up. So there’s something happening right now that’s extremely special. Because a lot of these bands that came out at that time, the bands that I forementioned with, along with COAL CHAMBER, were doing something extremely authentic and from our hearts, and we didn’t know what the fuck we were doing. I mean, it’s literally like picking up a paintbrush that you’ve never used before and just, ‘Let’s see what this will do.’ The next thing you know, you’re looking at something that no one’s ever done, and you’re, like, ‘I don’t know. Let’s put it out. Oh shit, people like it? Weird. Cool. We like it too. And if we like it and they like it, there’s something fucking authentic to it.’ There’s no big mystery. And if it’s not authentic, people will feel it.”

He continued: “I believe there’s a lot of bands that came out on that third wave of nu metal that, for me, were way too radio pop-driven, not authentic, in my opinion. But COAL CHAMBER reserves the right to say, yeah, we were coming from our heart. And ‘Rivals’ especially, because when we wrote that, we were in another kind of tumultuous time in between us as writers, and I think that push and pull really made for that record, ’cause it’s fantastic, that record.”

Asked if there is any new music in the works from COAL CHAMBER, Dez said: “I’m not a guy who sits around and watches TV, so there’s always music in the works. That’s what I gotta say. There’s always music in the works, man, and after what I survived in my past year, I’m gonna make as much music as I possibly can. If something happened to me today, my wife has hard drives and hard drives of music from me, making it with different people and different circumstances. But it’s all I do. I woke up this morning and we were having coffee, and after 15 minutes, she looked at me, she’s, like, ‘Good morning,’ actually saying to me, like, ‘What are you doing?’ And I was writing a song. I was on my phone writing notes, and I wrote something I think is fantastic. So this is kind of what I do. I can’t stop. I think there’s a drive there. So we’ll see.”

COAL CHAMBER recently completed a U.S. tour as the support act for MUDVAYNE. Additional support on the 26-city “The Psychotherapy Sessions” trek, which was produced by Live Nation, came from GWAR, NONPOINT and BUTCHER BABIES.

COAL CHAMBER played its first two shows in eight years at the Sick New World festival in Las Vegas in May and at the Inkcarceration Music And Tattoo Festival in Mansfield, Ohio in July.

COAL CHAMBER existed for ten years before disbanding in 2003 to pursue other musical projects. They reunited in 2011 for touring purposes but it wasn’t until 2014 that the band began work on a new studio album of original material, 2015’s “Rivals”. Several months of touring activity followed before Dez returned to DEVILDRIVER to make a new record, 2016’s “Trust No One”.

Image credit: IFM RAW