DevilDriver/Coal Chamber frontman Dez Fafara had a lot to say about the band’s upcoming outlaw country covers album, which will feature numerous guest musicians when it arrives in stores next year. Speaking with Metalwani.com in the below interview, he revealed that Danzig, Lamb Of God‘s Randy Blythe & Mark Morton, John 5, Lee Ving of Fear and more will guest on the effort, which will be released via Napalm Records. He said of that:
“It’s a really strange thing in the United States if you come a tour bus—a heavy metal tour bus—you’re gonna hear everything from punk rock to outlaw country. I mean that’s just it. If you could go on… I could name a ton of heavy bands that you could walk on their bus and hear Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson, I mean that’s just… We all within metal respect those outlaw guys.
- Advertisement -They’re about as heavy as it gets, they’re outlaws. That speaks volumes, that means their music was underground in a point in time when they went underground with their music and it got popular, it wasn’t pop music that made them popular.
So yeah, DevilDriver right now is taking 13 different artists, we’re doing a outlaw cover country record. We’ve got over 20 guests. Just to give you an example I’m singing “Ghost Riders In The Sky“. I worked at Johnny Cash‘s cabin outside of Memphis. I sang with John Carter Cash—Johnny Cash‘s song—and his wife. And now Randy from Lamb Of God is gonna jump on that song.
So now we’ll have me, John Carter Cash, Ana Cash and Randy from Lamb Of God on “Ghost Riders In The Sky“. Every single song has different guests. We’ll have Danzig. We’ll have Lee Ving from Fear. John 5 from Rob Zombie. Mark Morton from Lamb Of God. So many guests it’s hard to even mention.
But we really, once we started this project, we thought about maybe having one or two people. A lot of other metal musicians… I mean even Corey Taylor from Slipknot called us and said ‘Look I’d love to do this if I have the time’… It’s very relevant within heavy metal or even the softer metal, rock n’ roll bands, that they listen to these outlaw country artists, have respect for what they’ve done, and I do as well, very much so.”
He continued:
“The music is completely recorded. The vocals—I start vocals in twelve days. There’s a few other vocalists that have already done their sections. There’s also a few guitarists, that have like… Mark Morton has already done his solo, John 5 from Rob Zombie has already done his solo. So there’s a couple other stuff that’s done.
Lee Ving is gonna get on “The Ride” with me—Lee Ving from Fear; Another iconic individual that I grew up on. I mean if you Google my name, you’re gonna see me wearing a Fear shirt most often. But he’s gonna play harmonica and sing with me as well on a really heavy, heavy tune called “The Ride” by Hank Williams. It’s really coming along great, we expect [to release it] next year.”
“Let me tell you something, this thing is fantastic. If you’ve ever heard extremely heavy guitars also with a slide lap pedal steel guitar behind it, it’s fantastic. It’ll give ya goose bumps. It’s something that’s never been done before. The genres have probably never been mixed in the way that we’re doing it for sure. And like I said the guest list is absolute insanity.”
The band are still deciding on how they will tour on the release, including whether they would be mixing songs from it into their set, or touring exclusively on it. In other news, Fafara also has big plans for the band’s next release, which likely won’t surface for at least another year or two. As it turns out, the band are sitting on a surplus of music and may release a double album:
“I don’t see next year happening, but we do already have eleven brand new songs and let me tell you they are phenomenal. The stuff that’s coming out of us now, it’s like a complete resurgence. I’m very, very excited to go in… As a matter of fact, we’ve been having conversations; We have so much music that we want to do.
And sometimes when we do a record, we put twelve tracks on the record, but we’ve written 25 tracks. It’s not the reason that only 12 tracks make the record cause they’re the only good ones. So we’re sitting here with extra songs that are so great, [but] they’ll never see the light of day. So we kinda said, next time we go in to write, lets write 30 or 40 songs.
Let’s try to do a double record, that way we can not have to come off the road so long to write… We can stagger the releases between six months to a year. And then some of those amazing songs that maybe didn’t fit with the lineup of one record can also fit with the lineup of another record. So we’re toying with the idea of doing a double record, staggered release next time. But we’ll really see how that goes.”
As for the status of Coal Chamber, he says there’s nothing currently in the works, offering:
“I just think at this juncture right now there’s some things within them, personally, that they need to work on before they can go back on the road and do business and be pros. So whenever they’re ready they know my number and if they need to be picked up at 3 in the morning on the side of the road because their car broke down they can feel free to call me.”
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