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| Kerry's Coal Chamber Castle | home |
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| These interviews are from different time periods.... I mixed them up... If you have any to add.. Please do! |
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| Interview with Mike in Philly 3-18 |
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| by: Heather Duffy (luv ya girl!) |
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| When the dressing room door finally opened, and everyone exited, some looking relieved, others disappointed, I caught up with Mikey. He led me into the dressing room and after a brief introduction between myself and his dog, we sat down across from one another to begin what must have been a much easier question and answer session then one he just experienced. |
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| HD: How did the meeting go?
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| MC: Good, they seem to know what they're doing, but they're one of many we have to talk to so we'll see.
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| HD: So there's still no manager?
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| MC: I'm sick, we all are or were, but we've been looking forward to this tour.
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| HD: Is it good have Rayna back as you hoped?
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| MC: It is great, phenomenal. We're all happy to be back together, we feel whole now.
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| HD: Has anyone talked to Nadja?
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| MC: Yeah, someone has. She's playing for Tairrie B now. Iggy Pop, too.
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| HD: How is Rayna and her daughter?
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| MC: Good. Rayna has the fattest baby. I've nicknamed it Slimer. I'm still amazed that baby came out of her though. She's cute and at least she doesn't have her dad's nose.
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| HD: Have you moved to Los Angeles yet?
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| MC: Not yet. At the end of this tour I'll be moving. It can't come soon enough. I hate the cold.
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| HD: You added electric drums to your set for the last tour. Are you still using them?
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| MC: Yeah, Miguel and I rigged something up so we wouldn't need anyone else, we didn't get a keyboardist because we didn't want to deal with anyone else. Dez won't play guitar cause he's too short.
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| HD: Will you be making anymore videos following "Shock the Monkey"?
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| MC: We were suppose to make a live video tonight, but that fell through. We've only made one video per album. "Loco" on the first one. I'm not happy with the "Shock the Monkey" video. It was way too much money for nothing.
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| HD: What's your favorite song off "Chamber Music"?
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| MC: "My Mercy," well, it's different. "Untrue" is another favorite. I'm pleased with the album, it's 3D, we put a lot of work into it to make it that way. Not a lot of fans are happy with it, but we didn't want to make "Loco" again. You know, some fans would be happy if we played "Loco" 10 times and that was it.
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| HD: Is it true you never graduated High School?
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| MC: What? No! I finished when I was 17. I got done early I was such a nerd. Man, who said that? I gotta set that straight. I had no friends in high school, I was smart, I was a nerd. I went to high school where there was like 10 white kids, in LA, and I played "Smells Like Teen Spirit" at a band competition and riots broke out. I got suspended.
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| HD: You beat your brother out for this job.
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| MC: Yeah, not really beat him. I just fit better. He plays more alternative stuff . Now he's in the band Dozen Doses. There isn't any animosity between us for it or anything.
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| HD: Sharon Osbourne and Coal Chamber split as you said. Why?
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| MC: We fired her. I wanna make that loud and clear. She wasn't doing a good job. She didn't even get us on Ozzfest! So we're kinda on our own for now.
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| HD: Did you commit to this tour before or after she was fired?
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| MC: After, otherwise we probably wouldn't be out touring now.
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| HD: Do you like touring with Type O Negative?
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| MC: We get along well with Type O negative. We like playing with them., so we're fine doing this tour. Have you see Peter walking around?
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| HD: Yeah, he's intimidating.
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| MC: I know! I thought I was big, but he's Goliath!
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| HD: What are your plans after the tour?
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| MC: After the tour we'll take a break, I'll move, hopefully by then we'll have a manger, then later we'll do "Tattoo the Earth." That should be at the end of the summer or so.
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| HD: "Tattoo the Earth"? Who is playing?
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| MC: Besides us, Slipknot, and Sevendust, and others. It will be great. The tickets will be cheap, like $20 and it'll be in a big field, no seats, no $5 water like other summer tours. There will be tattoo and piercing booths with some of the best in the country so everyone can rock and get tattooed. Bands now are all about making money, we don't want that for this tour, It's a tour for the fans.
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Meegs Story
(Circus Magazine... Jan. 2000)
Typed up by Michelle... Thank you!!
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| Coal Chamber's Miguel "Meegs" Rascon is a bit haggard when it comes time for him to dial up yours truly for this interview. The gregarious guitarist dials up just prior to the foursome's road departure with the floor-to-the floor Slipknot, Machine Head's aggro-muse and Amen's middle finger salute to convention. |
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| The headlining jaunt is in many ways a second shot at introducing their new album Chamber Music to the world after a failed headlining attempt with Insane Clown Posse this summer.Of the controversial situation Meegs says, "The whole thing was a bit ridiculous. They told us that it was production problems with our set or something like that. We've got pyro and all that but look what they do. I sort of don't want to get into it because there's a lot of bullshit surrounding the situation right now. But I will say that the whole thing was fucked up, and we got fucked over but we ended up headlining our own better fucking tour." |
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| As we talk, Meegs springs to life as he ponders his upcoming jaunt which will be in progress by the time this graces your hot little fingers. "Anyone that likes this type of music will realize that this is one of the best tours going out this year. I love all of the bands on the bill, so it should be really cool." "It's going to be really cool to sit on the side of the stage and watch everybody every night and then hang out. That's why I'm personally looking forward to this. Plus we'll get a chance to get out there and play these new songs for our fans." |
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| At this point, I've picked the brains of the entire outfit (minus Nadja, the band's fill in for Rayna Foss Rose who was on maternity leave) and the one word that rises to the surface continually is fans.Yeah, you guys who read this magazine and buy their records. While Coal Chamber settles for nothing than the very best that they can pull out of themselves, they seem to take you guys into consideration upon their every move."Dude, our fans are the best. They have stuck with us because I think we are true to ourselves.," says Meegs. "Like with this album we changed a lot andwe were never worried about whether or not they would appreciate it."They are with us for life because we are so into them. We hang out with our fans after shows but not in that fake let-me-sign-this-stuff-real-quick-so-we-can-get-out-of here kind of way. "Like before, when you asked me about how it felt to see so many kids dressed like us at shows. That's so cool because it gives them a chance to show their individuality. Especially in a lot of the smaller towns that we go to.A lot of them can't dress a certain way unless it's at a Coal Chamber show." |
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| Picking up steam he continues with "I don't want to sound all conceited or whatever because I'm not. It's just a really, really good feeling and I think that's where the connection comes in."Speaking of connections, the question of who he connected with at the early stages of his musical development come up. "Eddie Van Halen...yeah definitely him at first. I think at that time that was who every guitar player looked up to. Oh and there's Mick Mars...yeah definitely Mick. Motley Crue as a whole really inspired me but as a guitar player, Mick's solos are so humble. He did what was best for the song and nothing more. He was really overlooked because he wasn't doing that hotshot shit when every other guitar player was and I think that's what makes him so memorable.""For me, I don't like to do solos. On the new album there's only one song (My Mercy) that I do a solo in and that's pretty minimal."You know, I'm so anti solo. I just think for what we do it wouldn't work.Solos would ruin our songs because they are so reliant on grooves. We don't like to write songs that are longer than two or three minutes,, so if you stick a solo in the middle of that it would throw it way out of whack." Coming up for breath, Meegs jumps back to the root of the original question. "Ok, so you know who else I really admire as a player is Jerry Cantrell. I really like his dark, creepy tone. He was another guy who did really cool solos that fit the song."Laughing, he finishes off the round with "Shit...maybe I should do somes solos. I think I've just been lazy...nah." |
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| In the scope of two LPs they've got more touring under their belt than many a veteran band so the term lazy hardly does the trick. Later on, Meegs gets down on how he approached the studio experience."All of us were total team players and it shows in the songs. I think we really all surprised ourselves with this one. I don't want to sound all ego or whatever but we really didn't have many preconceived ideas about the record until we were done with it. "I know I really surprised myself. I used more effects this time but in a way that's not overbearing. You can still hear the natural tonality of the instrument."As the world prepares to absorb their cover of Peter Gabriel's Shock the Monkey, he points out that it's not about cashing in on the current trend of get rich quick remakes which have elevated the status of some acts and has flat out defined the short career of others."We've wanted to do that song for a long time. So when we did it, it was with the understanding that we were going to do it our way. We were lucky to have Ozzy (Osbourne) come in and sing on it and he and Dez changed the words and melodies around quite a bit. We retuned it and made it sound like one of our songs. I hate it when a band does a note for note cover, it makes nosense." |
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Away from Coal Chamber, this self proclaimed "stay out all night guy" has interests other than his native band though they don't seem to venture outside of the music business. "I like working with my friends who have bands. I guess that's what I do. Maybe later I'll get way into that...you never know. I'm the one you always see out in bars in LA roaming around and making the scene, so I guess that describes the closest thing I have to hobbies."Based on the strength of Chamber Music's powerful yet eerie closer "Anything but You", "Tyler's Song's" steady groove and the out-of-the-gate power and cynicism of "Tragedy" there's no doubt that this album will do very well."I guess the bottom line is that we're so appreciative of everything that we've gotten. You know maybe because of how we've done things we'll get a chance to get a lot bigger on this record. But if that happens it's not because we've sold out and picked up a bunch of acoustic guitars or something. It's because we have the best fans in the world that bought our first record and gave us the opportunity to do another one."
Pit 30 Interview with Mike
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| It's been two years since Los Angeles-based COAL CHAMBER's self-titled Roadrunner debut sold 400,000 units here in the US Two years may seem like an eternity in the music business, but the band took their time in creating Chamber Music, their sophomore effort, released this fall. The extra care they took to produce Chamber Music seems to have paid off. The album entered Billboard magazine's Album Chart at #22; making it Roadrunner's highest debut ever. The new record features collaborations with OZZY OSBOURNE (on a remake of PETER GABRIEL'S "Shock The Monkey"), ELIJAH BLUE (of DEADSY), and son of CHER and GREG ALLMAN), and AMIEE ECHO (formerly of HUMAN WASTE PROJECT and now HERO). The album builds on the down-tuned, heavy riffs, and agonized vocals of their debut, but adds more melody, keyboard effects and vocal arrangements to keep the inevitable comparisons to other new metal bands to a minimum. Their updated website (www.coalchamber.com) features each individual band member presented in their own trippy "chamber". Meanwhile, the video for "Shock The Monkey" made MTV, while more touring (something the band knows too well) continues. After a quick stint with the INSANE CLOWN POSSE (just two days, with law suit pending at press time), COAL CHAMBER hit the road with SLIPKNOT, AMEN, and DOPE. (COAL CHAMBER has filed $275,000 breach of contract complaint against ICP. Among the grievances listed: ICP restricted COAL CHAMBER's use of stage pyrotechnics and reduced the bands $9000 fee per show to $3000.) The band is very proud of this new album, as drummer Mike "Bug" Cox explains. |
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| Pit: So your new album is finally out...what took so long?
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| Mike Cox: It was suppose to come out in February, then it got pushed to May and so on. Dez (Fafara) took a long time on his vocals, cause we just wanted it to be perfect. I think this album is going to do ten times better than our first one. We had an awesome producer (Josh Abraham) and we were much better prepared this time.
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| It seems you like almost went out of your way to avoid those KORN comparisons this time. |
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| You need your own identity. Even overseas we got that. I remember seeing an interview of us in a French magazine, and the only English word i could understand was "KORN". We blatantly tried not to sound like them. It's just that we had the same producer and since KORN is really hot right now, we get allot of comparisons. |
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| The track with OZZY OSBOURNE, "Shock The Monkey", sounds interesting. |
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| It's heavy and sick and Ozzy's on it. How can you go wrong with that? It's Ozzy and Dez singing back and forth. MTV's going to play it. |
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| Since the sound of the band is evolving, is your look changing too? |
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| We're going fo a whole new look, a darker look. With my hair, I've done everything possible. It's grown out now, spiked up everywhere with really long bangs. I'm [dying] it red tomorrow. But I took all my piercing out. It's so trendy now. I went to the mall the other day and it's like you see people working at the Gap with piercing and I'm like, 'Holy shit, it's not even weird anymore!" |
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| What's up with your drum set? |
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| I just signed with Toma drums, so I'm kinda changing everything right now. I've replaced my kick drum with an electronic one, cause I trigger the stuff and don't need a kick. The drum sizes are 8, 10, 13, 16, and I have everything black. I even have black cymbals now. I had them custom made. |
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| I'm sure it sounds killer. |
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| When we play, we go nuts. We go absolutely crazy. It's so loud. I break like 20 sticks a show; they just go like toothpicks. Chicago is always a great city of us to play. Our biggest gig was in the U.K. We had 67,000 people all jumping up and down at the same time and singing our songs. It's amazing. |
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| There are allot of people who work for you behind the scenes. How do you deal with them? |
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| My drum-tech is well paid.He used to make more money than I did! I basically took him from a job at McDonald's and made him my drum-tech. I gave him the good life. But if he f*cks up, I definitely let him know-just like his boss at McDonald's would let him know. If my shit is set up wrong or if the monitors sound like shit, I can't do my job right. And if I don't do my job right, we don't sell records. We're very cool to our techs on a personal level. We let them party, we take them out, but when I walk out on stage, everything has to be right. |
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| For the COAL CHAMBER album you guys toured for 18 months straight. Wasn't it difficult? |
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No one knows how f*ckin' lonely you get on the road. It is bad. I swear to God, I'll cry on stage while I'm playing for no reason at all-it just happens. You just get so overwhelmed by the fact that all you have out the is your band. You live on the f*ckin' pay phone. I started flying my girlfriend out for like three months at a time because it gets so stressful. Something happens everyday that creates drama. We like workin' for it though. I don't want to be given anything."
Drum interview with Mike
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| While barely a new shaver at the age of 21, Mike Cox is a hardened veteran of hard rock stages nonetheless. For this distinction, he can thank his band mates in Coal Chamber, as well as an indie record company energized beyond capacity by the success of the band's self titled freshman release, and, of course, his good old lucky stars. |
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| A couple years ago Coal Chamber was skulking along with little momentum until Sharon Osbourne-proactive wife of the notoriously successful Ozzie-took the little shock rock band under her management wing. Fortune's reversal was immediate and dramatic for Cox, who at age 19 had previously only played in neighborhood garages and high school talent shows, when he suddenly found himself facing an audience of 4,000 headbangers on the second stage at the San Bernardino pit stop of the 1997 Ozz Fest. |
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| It happened to be his very first gig with the band. "I was so scared," he says, "I watched all the bands on the main stage. It was surreal, because I went from being basically a fan of these bands like Slayer and Ozzie to playing a show with them. It totally freaked me out. I couldn't even talk. But after the first song I got comfortable and realized that [it] was definitely my thing." |
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| Now Cox feels more at home on a tour bus than he does at home. "I'm going crazy," he admits, "I went straight from high school to being on tour on a bus for two years." Cox will soon be back in his element, though, now that Coal Chamber has released its second album Chamber Music. A new dramatic departure, Chamber Music introduces a new emphasis on melody, and a thicker production with layers of guitars and keyboards, much of which Cox will trigger from Roland pads on the upcoming tour. |
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| This is his first exposure to electronic percussion. "It opened my mind," he says. "Now I realize I can do samples, and with sampler you can sample anything in the world." As far as his acoustic kit? Well ... "I don't even know how to set up my own drum set or tune them anymore. My tech does everything for me." |
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Coal Chamber "live in the Rockies"
April 1998
By: Chris Heuschkel
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| DCC - Dez of Coal Chamber
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| ENLS - Eric Nielsen of Loudside
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| ENLS- Coal Chamber has been on the road for the last thirteen months, touring with metal legends Ozzy and Pantera, up and coming stars Day in the Life and Human Waste Project, and many others as well, and most recently they're on tour with Megadeth and Life of Agony (now fronted by Whitfield Crane, formerly from Ugly Kid Joe - who by the way denied Loudside of the Web an interview and henceforth was returned with a big, long middle finger) Coal Chamber mixes a variety of musical influences and they have refined their sound over the past thirteen months. The aural force, combined by the onstage theatrics, makes for a live experience matched by few. |
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| C- Just before the Megadeth, Coal Chamber, Life of Agony show here in Colorado Springs started, I got to sit down and talk a bit with Coal Chambers front man, Dez. We talked about the new material, and life in general. Here is a little of what he had to say: |
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| C- How has this Megadeth and Life of Agony tour been for you guys? |
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| DCC- Great man, Megadeth has been treatin us wonderful. |
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| DCC- We are best friends with those guys. |
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| C- Last time Coal Chamber came through Denver, you guys threw in two new songs, how has that new material working so far? |
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| DCC- Good, Anxiety, wow we did it for a while and it's in the pocket now the way it's probably gonna stay on the next album and now we are doin a song called Not Living which we will do tonight, which is in the pocket and probably not gonna change. But Not Living I think is gonna be the first song on the next album. So thats pretty cool. |
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| C- How much do you guys have done for the new album? |
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| DCC- A lot man, a lot, yeah I have tons of lyrics written and we have alot of music written. We have our whole style, which we're gonna go with and its going to be a little bit of a departure and more textured and more landscape, but still heavy...you know, still Coal Chamber. |
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| C- So where have you gotten a lot of your inspiration for the new material? |
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| DCC- Ummm, the last year and a half, of life. Totally it totally comes from that, the whole way through. |
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| C- Are there any ideas on an Album title, yet? |
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| DCC- Yeah, I think its going to be called Chamber Music. We haven't decide for sure, I mean it might change, but were all pretty happy with that. |
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| C- Is there any approximate date of maybe being done? |
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| DCC- No were supposed to go in around September, but I dont think we will go in because the album sales keep going up. I mean if Nine Inch Nails are touring, and if we could get that tour or something, than yeah we will stay out. |
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| C- Do you have any word of a possible NIN and Coal Chamber tour? |
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| DCC- I mean, no, we are just lookin for anything, you never know, if something good pops out, you know, even if it's Insane Clown Posse and us going out, co- headlining somewhere. As long as its a good band to tour with.we'll stay out. |
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| C- Are you guys ready for this years Ozz Fest? |
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| DCC- Yeah, yeah. We're doing main stage and after we do this for another two weeks, we go out with Sevendust, and uh, Human Waste Project and Day in the Life. For a month. Then we go to Europe to do, festival shows with Ozzy and Black Sabbath and Pantera. And Ozz Fest over there as well. Then we come back over here and do the main stage, for Ozz Fest in the States. |
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| C- I was going to ask a little about the last tour with Day in the Life, and Human Waste Project, how did that go? |
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| DCC- Yeah it went totally killer, Human Waste Project, I have been pushin them since right from the beginning. I'm the only guy in a band that pushes them more than they do themselves. I love Human Waste Project and I fucking love Day in the Life. Sevendust and I are great friends. |
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| C- I found it a little interesting seeing a band like Day in the Life playing with Coal Chamber, I feel Day in the Life is a bit outside the genre of Coal Chamber, but personally I think it's great. Can you talk a little about that? |
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| DCC- I think its cool that all the different bands, are touring with each other, that's the most important part. And that were all helping each other out, cause were creating this big extended family. There's a lot of bans that came out, some bands that have came outside of LA, that just talk about themselves and wont talk about any other band, and it started to piss me off, so know I push everybody. To create that extended family, its like one hand washes the other, you know.. as soon as youre goin up the same people you are going to see are the same ones you'll see goin down. |
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| C- What was the best new band you saw last year? |
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| DCC- Ahh, the best new band I saw last year, Sevendust. Me and Lajon are so tight, were such good friends. |
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| ENLS- What do you see as the best new up and coming band? |
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| DCC- Human Waste Project, I mean, I don't know, I haven't heard the System of A Down record yet, I haven't heard what Spine Shanks gonna do, they're on Roadrunner now. There's a lot of good music that's getting ready to hit. It's hard to judge, there's so much good stuff out there right now. I hope we change the scene. You know we need to change the scene. |
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| C- How do you think it needs to change? |
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| DCC- The scene, fuck yeah, it needs to change. It's bullshit, all you hear on the radio is Bush. The scene is killer, what I am talking about is that the scene needs to overpower. |
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| C- As far as new albums coming out this year, what do you see as the one that is going to stand out? |
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| DCC- New Pantera, I heard one of the new Pantera songs. Im real tight with Phil. In New Orleans we played the House Of Blues, and afterwards, I went to and hung out at his house with him. We drank wine till three in the morning, and he played me this stuff that he did with Tony Iommi, that's just amazing. It's just amazingly dark, and he played me a new Pantera song. That he wrote and sang, it's fucking amazing. It's gonna blow people away. He's like singing but he's screaming to, you know, its almost like reminiscent of the first Pantera, except it's totally new vibe because it's way harder. |
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| C- I heard somewhere that through Phil you have seen a new form of music, that you may have otherwise missed. I guess the best way I can put it is, like Black Metal? Are you a big fan, now? |
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| DCC- Im totally familiar with it now, I'm in love with it now. My favorite bands are Dark Throne and Emporer, and you know some crazy shit that I would have never known about, had it not been for my friend. |
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| C- What do you have in your CD player at home, or here on the bus? |
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| DCC-You know what's weird is this morning when I got up I listened to Soft Cell and This afternoon I listened to Emporer. But im weird because I listen to either hard core R&B, like Foxy Brown, and like Erika Badu and shit like that. I love Erika Badu. |
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| C- If it hadn't been for Coal Chamber where would you see yourself, also what were you doing before Coal Chamber? |
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| DCC- Before, I was a brick layer, a hair dresser. I dont know what I'd be doing. My life, well I've been doing this sense I was young. So it was about something fucking went down. I mean at 15 I was a drummer in a rockibilly band, like way more psychobilly, like the Cramps. |
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| C- Where exactly does the ispiration come from for your look? |
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| DCC- Wow dude, you see this dragon tattoo, I got this when I was like 14, I got kicked outta my house, so you know what I mean. Its always been in me, I have had bikers around my family forever, and stuff like that so I've always been into a different sort of self culture. I like down to earth people, I would trust people with peircings and tattoos way more than I would trust somebody in short hair with a suit and tie on. Because you know, I show exactly who I am on the outside, you can look right at me, I'm going to tell you exactly what I am about. |
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| C- Could you ever see yourself as being that person in the suit? |
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| DCC- Fuck no!! No, no way, because there is no form original expression, I mean I know some people have to do it, just to do there job, maybe what's cool is that they do it by wearing a black suit with a purple tie or something cool, then it's cool. I love self expression. |
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| C- Lets say that if by some chance you could be the vocalist for some band out there, who would it be? |
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| DCC- Black Sabbath, I don't know, Pantera. I could never take any of those guys postion, but I'd like to sing with them one time, do a song or some shit. |
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| C- Do you have any guest appearances scheduled for the new album? |
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| DCC- Yea a couple. I mean one of them will probably be Phil, for sure, actually with out a doubt, cause I wrote a song for the both of us, umm I want to get somebody in singing with me like Erika Badu or somebody like that. Somebody that I am really into to come sing back ups for us, the album is changing there's a lot of different stuff. |
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| C- Have you gotten a hold of anybody regarding Erika Badu? |
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| DCC- Oh yeah, well Sharon Osbourne is our management and we can contact anybody we want. I also actually want to get Peter Murphy to sing a song with me as well. So if he could do it that would be amazing. Because Bauhaus is my favorite band in the world. |
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| C- That would be killer to have a Coal Chamber album with Erika Badu doing backups. |
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| DCC- It would be killer, I mean who knows, she might just go, what? It's a dream but you know, it's something I want to do, because we've got some mellow songs. That are unreal for me to write. I just have to do them a certain way. |
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| C- Any reason you kind of went that route? |
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| DCC- Yea, I have no home I have nothing, except two back packs, been on the road for thirteen months straight. I have been home 8 days. My girl friend that I had after my girl that made me write the album, fucking left me and took my dog to the pound because I was not home. |
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| C- Where do you call home? |
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| DCC- I don't have a home, you're in it right now (speaking of the tour bus). Your sitting in my living room, I mean when we come of the road I will probably move to Dallas. Cause I have a girl that I am kind to seeing there. I have a lot of friends there. |
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| C- On the album at the very end, we hear you and Jonathan Davis fucking around, any stories behind that? |
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| DCC- John came down to do a song with me and we took a bunch of valium and drank Jagermeister, and we ended up sitting Indian style next to each other in the room, just talking. They were like are you guys ready to record and we were like no we are just gonna talk all night. And we just ended up talking and that is the last part they put on it. We were walking out and taking off our headsets asking if Satan is real or God or whatever. |
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| In closing Dez gave a few words on a new song that he has written about a girl who was hit by a car outside the Bluebird Theater, here in Denver, Colorado. The last time Coal Chamber came through with Human Waste Project and Day in the Life. So be on the look out on down the road for a kick ass new Coal Chamber album, I'm sure. Plenty of touring is also planned. So check them out if you haven't already. |
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| Interview with Mike Nov. 10th, 1999 |
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| Coal Chamber, who have been busy touring the U.S. and Europe, were about to play in Portland, Oregon the night I spoke with Mike Cox, Coal Chamber's newest permanent recruit and drummer. Mike is very cool, accommodating, and easy to talk with. In between bouts of cell phone transmission outages, we laughed a lot and spent a few moments discussing his dreams and nightmares, and what it feels like to have come out of high school and thrust straight into a successful, touring band. Here it is… |
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| Hey Mike, nice to meet you, sort of. I'll see you this weekend though. |
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| Oh cool. Very cool. Our hometown... |
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| Is Hollywood your hometown? |
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| Yeah, it is. I live in New York now, actually, but that's where we started and everything. |
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| Is that where you're originally from? |
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| Uh, I was born in Detroit, Michigan and moved to Hollywood when I was 5 years old so, I consider that my hometown. |
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| I hear there are some people that are sick right now. |
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| Nah, I've been over it... I had it a couple of weeks ago. |
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| It's got to be so hard being sick and trying to play out. |
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| It's just because we were in Canada and it was like 2 degrees there, so no one was prepared, I guess. |
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| How does it feel having all these people wanting to talk to you all the time? Is it weird? |
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| Nah, it's cool. It's become a natural, like, every day thing. It's become routine. |
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| How is the tour been so far? Are you tired? |
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| Very cool. Tired, yeah. We've been playing a lot of shows in a row. This one tonight will be 7 in a row. The one in Hollywood will be the last show, but uh.. we've been playing too many shows this tour. But it's the only way to get amped, I guess. But I am tired, yeah. |
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| How is the band's relationship with ICP now? (Insane Clown Posse) |
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| Uh, we don't really talk about it. We're still going through all the stupid court process right now. But obviously we're not friends. But the whole thing is, they're like wrestlers. The whole thing is faked, it's all hyped up. It is what it is. Now that I know they're in it for purely entertainment purposes only, I'm not that bitter anymore. As long as we win our money in court so it's getting blown up bigger than it should be. We got the short end of that whole deal. |
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| I noticed the influence of children and the message to "do the right thing" on the CD and I was curious if you knew about how much of the CD was written at home? |
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| We wrote all the songs on the road. Then we wrote like 30 of them in Boston. They locked us up in this barn that became a studio, and there was nothing around, and all we did was write stuff. So, every song the whole band collaborated on. We collaborate on everything. I came up with some lyrics, Dez would come up with some drum parts and vice versa with everybody. So it's definitely not just one person writing the songs. We would all come down at like 2:00 in the morning and write together and that whole thing. |
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| How much influence does the band actually have on which song will become the first single from a new release? |
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| We have 100%. I mean, we have the cheesy radio people giving advice about what they think and they pressure us, but ultimately in the end every decision comes down to us. I mean we do take their advice because they've done it before, but it the end, it's us. |
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| Did you always want to be a musician? |
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| Uh.. no. For me, I came right out of high school. I got into the band and started early and kinda got thrown into it. It's the only thing I knew how to do. I didn't know I was going to be doing it to this level, but I was never really skilled at anything else. |
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| You didn't have a specific course of study that you were following in school? |
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| No. Nothing really, I literally just got thrown into it, which is probably better. |
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| Would you encourage kids to do it? |
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| Yeah, yeah definitely. Yeah, I mean, it's not easy. I got very, very lucky. I know people who have been studying it forever and have been trying to do it for 20 years; they can't do it. You know, they get their hopes up and then they never get it. Which is even worse you know. So I think I got very lucky compared to every other musician that I know |
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| Who were your heroes when you were little? |
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| I liked the Cure and Jane's Addiction. Anything that was like, the darker side of music. |
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| Anything that was toward the theatrical side of the live show. I think Jane's Addiction was my biggest influence. |
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| I loved Jane's Addicition. |
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| They're one of my all-time favorites, too. |
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| I've seen them live, like, 50 times. I saw them when I was 13 at the John Anson Ford theatre with the Chili Peppers and Fishbone when they were all not even big. It was like the best show in my life. It was insane. |
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| Perry Farrell and the way he writes has been a big influence on a lot of bands and a lot of people. |
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| Yeah, I used to go to their shows I would sit there and I would be so scared of them. He would bug his eyes out and I would get chills. I just loved that whole style of everything. |
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| Have you gotten the chance to meet some of the people that you were influenced by when you were little? |
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| Yeah, I met the drummer, Stephen Perkins. He's like a big hippie. He was very nice. That's about it. Lots of bands we tour with, like Pantera, Ozzy.. they weren't really influences on me but it's cool to meet them. Because 5 years ago, I was the kid on the other side of the barricade, you know, watching all these shows. So, it is cool to meet all these people. |
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| Speaking of Pantera, a lot of bands have trouble sleeping on the road because they play all these "sleeping games" with each other. Do you guys do that? |
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| Yes. Last night, I just got tattoed and they told me that when you get them, supposedly you get mentally drained. So last night in my sleep, I freaked out. I thought the bus was collapsing on me in my sleep. And I was screaming and the band woke me up. |
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| They said I was punching the top bunk because I thought it was collapsing on me. |
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| Do you talk in your sleep? |
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| I did last night! I was screaming, I woke the whole bus up. |
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| You feel like you're in a coffin sometimes. Supposedly, I've done this twice so far since we've been on the road. |
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| Do you dream in color or black and white? |
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| Hmm.. it's definitely in color. It has to be,. I mean I can't recall, but it has to be. I usually..(pauses) I have nightmares, I don't have dreams. |
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| That was my next question. Do you have good dreams usually, or bad ones? |
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| Do you have recurring ones? |
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| Just the one about the bus. And uh, I never have good dreams, they're always evil. |
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| No? No good sex dreams or anything? |
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| NO. Ahh..I think about that during the day though. Or when it comes time for me to sleep. (laughter) Yeah. |
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| So, when you dream do you dream about falling, or running from monsters.. or…? |
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| All that stuff. I have this one dream where I'm laying down but I'm floating above the ground, like, an inch off the ground and I'm floating all over the place. |
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| Yeah, scares the Hell out of me. That's the one that I have all the time. It's a weird one. |
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| How do you feel about electronic drums verses the traditional ones? Do think there is a loss of purity there? |
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| No, I like them and I use both now actually. I have some electronic stuff for when we have keyboard parts now, for the new record and we didn't want to get a keyboard player so I triggered some stuff up. I think it's cool. I think people need to embrace technology. Everything has to progress and the only way to progress is pretty much on the electronic side and that's what we did on the new record. We have some fans that don't like the new record because there's some electronic stuff on it, but you know, there's pretty much no other way to go. |
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| What was the last movie that you saw and really liked? |
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| American Beauty. It was twisted in a weird sense. Have you seen it? |
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| Yeah, it's a movie you had to think about. I loved it. I thought it was gonna suck because usually movies that are nominated for all the awards are usually pretty boring to me, but it was cool. |
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| Have you had time to see any concerts? |
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| I will never go to a concert. |
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| No. Because it's what I do every day. And I've pretty much seen every band in the world, so it's like the last thing I wanna do is go hang out at a concert. |
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| Do you listen to any music at all when you're off? |
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| Anything depressing. The Cure, stuff like that. I don't listen to anything heavy. I listen to techno stuff sometimes, stuff like that. |
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| What's the most embarrassing CD you have in your collection? |
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| Shit. I'm not enmbarrassed by anything. At all. |
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| Mine would have to be the Mariah Carey Christmas CD. |
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| Ohhhh. Well, I don't have that one. I don't know, I'm proud of all my old shit. I've got all the cheesy 80's shit. I got A HA and all that shit. I still like it! All the one hit wonders from all the 80's bands, all the compilations. |
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| The KTEL records!? No way… |
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| I have it all. I love old shit. I'm all into the cheesy, new wave, fuckin' I love it all. |
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| Where did the nickname "Bug" come from? |
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| Rayna. I have no idea. She won't tell me. She's like an alien. She's a space cadet. |
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| But I think it's because I used to have my hair like Coolio kind of. But she says it's because I used to bug her all the time, I used to live with her. But she's a space cadet. I can't figure her out. |
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| If you could have Pink Dot deliver anything to you right now, what would it be? |
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| Yes. I was looking for that earlier today, but I couldn't find any. |
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| You know they'll deliver you just one cigarette, right? |
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| Yeah! They'll deliver anything! |
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| What would you do if you knew that California was going to drop off into the ocean in 24 hours? |
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| You'd move? You'd come to California? |
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| Yeah. You mean if we would all die? |
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| Oh, yeah I'd go there for sure! I love California. |
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| So, you'd pack all your stuff from New York and get on out here? |
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| Yeah. I'm moving back to California in February when my lease is up. It's just way too fucking cold there. I hate the cold. Everybody I know that lived in New York is living in L.A. now. It is my favorite. Every time I go away, I wanna go back. |
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| One last question. What do you want for Christmas? |
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| Ummmmmm….shit. I never get anything. I want to be at home for once. That would be nice. I'm coming home Christmas Eve, we're going to Europe and I'm coming home Christmas Eve. I'd wanna come home earlier than that. I `m not into material things. I don't like getting stuff and putting on the cheesy fake smile, "Oh thanks. I'll never use this, but..thanks.. Grama .. another sweater.. thanks" . |
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| Well, at least you'll be home for Christmas. And I'm looking forward to the show. Although I've gotten hurt really bad every time I've seen you guys. I'm afraid of Dez now. |
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| Why? He's like five foot one! He's like an elf! |
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| I think he's got the swirly eye thing going on and he hypnotizes people and makes them violent. I got two ribs cracked last time I saw you play at the Palace and that's where you're going! |
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| He's like a Keebler elf! He should make, like, shoes for Santa! I'm like a foot and a half taller than him! He's tiny! It'll be fine! |
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| OK. If you say it's going to be fine, then I'll see you there. |
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| Interview with Dez and Miguel |
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| When Coal Chamber appeared on "The Howard Stern Show" recently, it wasn't to plug the band's new album, Chamber Music. Instead, the gothic hard rockers entered the studio to confront ex-tourmates, the trash-talking hip-hop phenomenon Insane Clown Posse, over money matters and to find out why they'd been dropped from the tour. While nothing was resolved, Coal Chamber (Dez, vocals, Meegs, guitar,Rayna, bass and Mikey,drums) definitely benefited from the on-air confrontation. |
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| The group's album debuted at #22 on the Billboard chart and sold 48,000 copies in its first week. Managed by Sharon Osbourne (Ozzy's wife), the band has since moved on from the ICP fiasco and joined the "Livin' La Vida Loco Tour" with labelmates Machine Head, Slipknot and AMEN. |
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| ROUZE: Insane Clown Posse bumped you from its tour, and now there's litigation. What happened? |
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| Dez Fafara: They owe us 100,000 dollars, and we're going to get it. It's really ridiculous what they pulled on us-they gave us no soundchecks, no lighting checks, and they didn't let us use any of our pyro. Whatever they want to say in their little wrestler minds is all cool, but the fact is this: half the crowd was leaving every night when we got off stage. |
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| ROUZE: Aside from getting bounced from a major tour, do you have any wild road stories? |
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| Fafara: Well, we've had everything from bus drivers dying or falling asleep and putting us off in a ditch to the usual groupie stuff. But the thing that touches me most is a 12-year-old girl walking up to me going, "My parents put me in a mental institution because I was ditching school, and I was in there for a year. Listening to your music helped me get through it." That's the kind of tour story that I want to remember rather than five dumb girls getting naked. |
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| ROUZE: So have you had five dumb girls getting naked for you? |
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| Meegs Rascon: Usually, the groupies on tour are really young. We're talking about jail bait. Occasionally, you'll get the ones who are over 18, and a lot of them are dancers. On the Insane Clown Posse tour, there was a band-I won't name what band it was-and on their tour bus I had a video camera in hand. In the back, it was a full-blown orgy. It was to the point where I was working every angle, getting a sense of how good I am at directing orgies. |
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| ROUZE: How did it come out? |
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| Rascon: It came out well! I got a money shot and everything. |
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| ROUZE: They didn't mind being taped? |
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| Rascon: No, they didn't care. Everyone was drunk. And the next day, they were like, "Dude, I don't know about that tape." I was like, "You shouldn't have said yes." I promised them I would never show it to anyone, but it's funny just to have. Good memories. |
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| Dez Interview March 20th, 1998 |
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| Angel C.: Do you ever miss playing the local clubs in Los Angeles? |
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| Dez: No, cause we do off gigs, when we'll do 600 to 1,200 seats. It's fun for us, we'll have an occasional unannounced show where there's, like, 115 kids. That's the best thing for us. |
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| Angel C.: Are you going to be with Megadeth the whole tour? |
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| Dez: Yeah, the whole tour, and it's been about two months. |
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| Angel C.: What was your oddest experience, something you've seen or done while touring? |
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| Dez: I've seen alot of weird things. I've seen our career go. I've seen our bus driver fall asleep and almost kill us. I've had a bus driver have a heart attack and die on us. I've had tonight, in Maine. This kid come up to me and said that his brother just killed himself. When you're gone for so long, you just experience so many emotions. So, that is kind of bumming my night out. |
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| Angel C.: At least you did that on stage. |
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| Dez: Well, you know, I don't feel that that's the way at all. Suicide is not the way, I've delt with it in my family. I've been there. |
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| Angel C.: You mentioned before that if you had stayed with Ross Robinson then he would have changed you as a band. If you had stayed with him, and gotten just as big, would you have as much respect for yourself and your music? |
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| Dez: Probably not. We used a producer that had never been used. Which by the way, Jay is the singer of Orgy. Which is on Korn's label. It's going to be the most amazing band ever. No one wanted to use him, but we had the balls. Same thing with the video production. Nathan, who did our video, never had done a video before. |
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| Angel C.: That's chancy then? |
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| Dez: Yeah, we want people that want to be a member of the band. But I have a lot of respect for Ross, and I would work with him in the future. Korn's not working with him on this next album. So, maybe, in two years we will work with him, cause he's a great guy and he's so spiritual. |
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| Angel C.: What was he going to turn you into? What exactly were you afraid of? |
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| Dez: It was because all the bands in LA have their own style. There's ten bands with a down tune style. Korn does things more dark. Human Waste Project does things a little more alternatively, keyboardish. He would have turned us into something that's not Coal Chamber. |
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| Angel C.: What advice do you have for unsigned bands? |
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| Dez: Play alot, hand out alot of demos, and don't ever sell a t-shirt until you get signed. |
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| Angel C.: The experimental albums, often the second album where bands muck around and see what style of music they like best. Do you expect to do one of them? Or are you always going to maintain your heavy edge? |
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| Dez: We'll always maintain the heavy edge, but it's going to be more textured and more landscapey. We have a song called "Mercy" that is one of our most mellow songs ever, but it just didn't make it to the album. So, what's cool, is that the second album is going to have songs which never made it. We just didn't have enough room. |
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| Angel C.: Do any of you have kids? |
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| Dez: Yeah, Miguel has a six year old, and I have a seven year old. We both had kids extremely young. |
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| Angel C.: Are you around enough for him? |
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| Dez: Not as much as I could be. I'd love to be with him more. |
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| Angel C.: So, what is your last name? I looked on everything and it just says Dez. |
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| Angel C.: Do you know when your next tour will be? |
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| Dez: We might quit touring in September. But we might keep going. We're not sure. (starts to sing, both laugh). We're going to finish with these guys in three weeks. Then it's going to be a month with Sevendust, Human Waist Project and Day of a Life, which is going to be good. Then we're going to go over to the Ozzfest, after that we're going to come back and do the Ozzfest here. We're going to be on the main stage. |
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| Angel C.: That's in Massachusets this year. |
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| Dez: Yeah we're going to be the second or third slot, which is really cool. It's an honor to even be on the mainstage. We'll be with bands like Tool, Ozzy, Limp Bizkit, and Megadeth. (after talking with other people) Are we done? |
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| Angel C.: I guess we could be! |
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| Angel: So how did you come across the new bassist? |
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| Dez: Meegs met her at a club in Los Angeles, and she came in and tried out. She was perfect, she didn't mess up once. |
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| Gnate: What do you have for tattoos? |
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| Dez: Oh my God. What don't I have tattooed? |
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| Gnate: What's your favorite? |
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| Dez: My Coal Chamber, and my two pumpkins, and the peanut on my neck. My mum named me peanut cause I was in an incubator for like 5 or 6 months of my life. A little premature there. |
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| Angel: Did your new bassist know all of the songs before hand ? |
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| Dez: Yeah, she knew them all. She came right in, and just did them, perfect. |
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| Gnate: Who are your musical influences? |
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| Dez: Everything from The Cure, to Motley Crue, Shot the devil. I used to listen to all kinds of music, just everything. Never like hold yourself down with one type of music. |
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| Angel: Why did you decide to work with this new producer this time? |
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| Dez: Josh Abraham. Jake Gordon did our first album, he's the singer of Orgy, got taught everything he knew from Josh. So working with Josh was like going from the student to the master. And you can see it, from the way he works. And he'd never done anything really heavy. And we wanted to diversify our sound, and we knew he could do it. |
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| Gnate: Do you find yourself working in the studio a lot, as far as the recording and producing goes, or do you let them handle that? Dez: That's all us, production is him, but we have a say so on what sound we want. Gnate: Who did the cover on your new album ? Dez: That's Anastasia, that's my girlfriend. Jill Greenburg, she's a great photographer. Angel: Are you going to use the same producer for the next album? Dez: I don't know, I 'd like to use Josh again. I think we haven't tapped into each others creativity yet, so that we wouldn't want to use him again. I think I could see us using him again, definitely. Gnate: What do you use for guitar tunings? |
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| Dez: Low, Low as hell, if it sounds like thunder it's fine. |
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| Gnate: I can't get it with 10's. |
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| Dez: I have no idea what he uses. |
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| Angel: Was it harder to compose 'Chamber Music', Making the songs, coming up with them, are they more complex do you think? |
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| Dez: Yeah, I think more complex, much more 3 dimensional, I think it had more texture then our last album. Not harder to do, by any means. It was just kind of a natural thing that came out through the recording process. |
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| Gnate: As far as Coal Chamber working with Ozzy in the studio, how was that? |
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| Dez: Amazing. To have Ozzy there, was the most amazing thing ever. And he comes in, and he's just so professional, and down to earth. It was just amazing. |
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| Gnate: You told him (Ozzy), "Hey, do what you want on that." |
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| Dez: Yeah, It's weird, when Ozzy will sing one line, and then it will sound like Ozzy, and then they'll double it. And it will really sound like Ozzy, just his signature sound. So it was really a trip to watch him, he's just really a professional, and he knew what he wanted to do too. He didn't do a lot of sudden little parts, he wanted to keep it in style, which was really cool. |
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| Gnate: It came out quiet well I thought. |
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| Angel: Have you planned anyway to make this tour different from the others? |
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| Dez: Every night is different. Every time you see Coal Chamber it's different. There's some people who have seen us like 10 or 15 times. And It's always been different. |
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| Angel: This is my fourth time. |
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| Dez: I don't know what's going to happen. Right now I'm really sick, I've been sick for like a week now, almost canceling. But I'm just like "fuck it." And the last couple nights have been extremely good, so maybe I can pull something out of me that's good. |
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| Gnate: How many shows are left on the tour? |
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| Gnate: What's your favorite book? |
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| Dez: The Hobbit. Movie would be, Nightmare before Christmas. |
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| Gnate: Anything Burton really. |
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| Dez: Yeah, anything Tim Burton, he's good. |
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| Gnate: What's your stand on bootlegging? |
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| Dez: For some reasons it's good, for the artist to get his music out. But then it takes money away. |
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| Gnate: What if it's not being sold? |
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| Dez: Then I love it, I don't mind. I would like to encourage people to start coming in and taping us, but we haven't gotten the OK to do that kind of thing yet. |
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| Gnate: I'm sure that there must be some problems through the record label. |
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| Angel C: Is Rayna going to return any time during this tour? |
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| Dez: No. She hasn't had the baby yet. |
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| Angel C.: I thought she did. |
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| Dez: Oh no. She's huge right now. We're playing in L.A. in three days and she can't even come to the show. |
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| Angel C.: Did she want to come on the tour? |
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| Dez: Yeah, she wanted to, and we were like no way. |
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| Angel C.: That could be kind of dangerous for her. |
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| Dez: She'd probably loose the baby I think. Playing the way she does on stage, we didn't want anything to compromise the child, that was the first thing. |
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| Gnate: Has she picked out a name yet? |
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| Angel C.: Are you friends with any of the bands that are currently accompanying you? |
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| Dez: Oh, we're friends with all of them. |
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| Angel C.: Have you known them for years? |
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| Dez: Amen are friends of ours, they've been friends for years. Machine Head is here because they took us to Europe, and their huge over there, and they made us who we are over there. Slipknot I heard they were a great live band at OZZfest, so we put them on, they are also on the same label. Now we're all great friends with them, their live shows insane. It's been a really great tour, It's been cool to hang out with everybody. |
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| Gnate: Who's your favorite band you've ever done a show with? |
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| Dez: Doing shows with Pantera and Black Sabbath. They were it for me. But I'd really love to do a show with a band called Tea Party. |
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| Gnate: Their really good, I haven't heard the first one. |
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| Dez: The first one is amazing, it's more zepplinie. The new one that just came out last night. Cause we just came from Canada, and it's amazing! |
|
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| Gnate: Yeah, their not to big down here, But I have a friend in Canada and she brought me up to see them. |
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| Dez: Yeah. The singer and I, Jeff Martin, we hung out, he bought me a bottle of wine. He was extremely nice to me, It was great to find out that he's a down to earth guy. |
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| Angel C.: Besides quality music. And good times from the music. What more do you want your fans to get out of it? |
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| Dez: To hear my words. To turn everything negative, into something positive. |
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| Gnate: Speaking of words, it's track 7, and I recorded that on my computer, and played it backwards and it's spanish. So what was it? I don't know spanish. Dez: It's basically saying there is no God with out satan, there is no satan with out God. All light is dark, all dark is light. You can't have one with out the other basically. Angel C.: Did the release of Chamber Music meet or exceed your expectations? Dez: Right now it's meeting, and hopefully it will exceed. I mean the "Shock The Monkey" is just being released, this week, and the video is going out to MTV this week too. Angel C.: It probably WILL exceed then. Dez: Hopefully. You know if they pick up on it. Their starting to play some heavy stuff so. That would be great. It would just be good for the whole scene. Gnate: Yeah. What do you think of MTV? Dez: I think that it would be nice to see "Shock The Devil", Motley Crue on the screen you know what I'm saying? I'd be like a little kid saying, "What is going on with that?" They need to start playing some more metal, some more rock, and they are. They have some new shows up there. |
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| Angel C.: Have you ever considered taking a year or two off, just to stay home with friends and family? |
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| Dez: Don't wanna. We play six nights a week, even if I'm sick. It's like a machine now and it has to roll. The only way to get our point across is to hit every single town 20 times. |
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| Angel C.: Are you afraid you might loose that if you take a couple years off? |
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| Dez: No. I mean Nine Inch Nails took off like what, 7 years or something like that, and they just came back with an album, and it's doing great. I see now, at this time, this album and the next album, we're just going to tour the hell out of it for 19 months, so were going to try for 20 next time. |
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| Gnate: What are your plans for the next album? |
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| Dez: I've been writing a lot right now. So I don't know what it's going to be like, It will be better then our second one I'm sure. And I want them to just keep getting better. So I think that the sixth Coal Chamber album will be incredible. |
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| Gnate: Yeah, hopefully you'll be around that long. |
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| Dez: Yeah, just got to keep touring. |
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| Gnate: Who directed your video "Shock The Monkey"? |
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| Dez: A guy named Dean Carr. He's a real scary, dark director. It's real dark, it's dark blues and reds, it's really crazy looking. |
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| Gnate: Have you ever worked with him before? |
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| Dez: No, no. But we saw a bunch of photo's he did and we were like, "Wow, your sick, your mind is totally sick." |
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| Angel C.: How do you think Road Runner is dealing with the promotion of this new album? |
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| Dez: Their stepping up to the plate pretty good right now. We'll see what happens. |
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| Angel C.: Do they have full confidence in it? |
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| Dez: 'They' have full confidence in it, it's just that they have to use a certain percent of it. They can't just spend 3 million dollars on promotion. So they wait to see numbers. Which is good, because right now we're showing the numbers. We came out number 22 on the Billboards, so it's good for us. And for an independent label that's amazing, it's the real voice of rock. We're only here because we tour, that's it, We don't have a lot of radio. |
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| Gnate: You get a fair amount of college radio. |
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| Dez: Yeah. We just heard a station today, here. |
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| Gnates: Is it the Bates station? |
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| Dez: Oh, I don't know. I saw some cool pirate radio station, in the library of some old house today, it was cool. |
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| Gnate: Do you know what frequency it was? |
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| Angel C.: What has been the highlight on this tour so far ? |
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| Dez: Every night I hit the stage. It's the best thing ever. I look to my right our bassist is there, I look to my left and see Meegs, and Mike is behind me. |
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| Gnate: Other than "Shock The Monkey", what do you guys do for covers? |
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| Gnate: So your not playing any tonight? |
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| Gnate: Do you ever plan to? |
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| Dez: No. I won't ever do another cover again. "Shock The Monkey" was something that was so dark at the time. We all love that song. Peter sounds so much like Ozzy, and Ozzy sounds so much like Peter, it was just like, we have to see it with Ozzy, and once we did. |
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| Gnate: It came out pretty good. |
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| Angel C.: Why does your bands style of music appeal to you? |
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| Dez: Because it's dark and heavy, and I love that kind of stuff. |
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| Angel C.: Is that all you listen to, or do you listen to more? |
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| Dez: No, I listen to everything, you know. I listen to, EVERYTHING. I've got two CD cases that are full. |
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| Gnate: If someone was in a record store, look at your CD, but they'd never heard you before. What would you want them to know about your band? |
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| Dez: That it's heavy, dark, aggressive music, and that this record will take you on a journey, to a different world, not just a big angry place. Which is cool for me, because it's so easy to just be pissed off, all the time. Every band is just pissed. |
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| Angel C.: In a past interview, you said that you called Sharron, at 3:00 a.m., concerned about your album. In which she replied it's great. What are you really still thinking, in regards to your release? |
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| Dez: After talking to like 500 guys, I'm really pleased, that everyone said what I was thinking. That it was something original in the scene. |
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| Angel C.: What exactly was it that you were concerned about, or afraid of? |
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| Dez: We wanted to get away from the high-breed, metal, hip-hop thing. I mean their all great friends of ours, their all great bands. We just wanted to be the first ones to step back and do dark rock n' roll. |
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| Angel C.: You've always been quiet far from that, I've seen them all. |
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| Dez: Thank you. We got lumped into categories that we didn't belong to. So this one is ours, we had to make a definite statement. |
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| Angel C.: Since a lot of fans of yours are 'goth', some of them even claim you guys are. How do YOU see yourselves though? |
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| Dez: Dark rock n' roll band. |
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| Gnate: So you probably don't like being classified as that. |
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| Dez: No. But if you want then classify me as rock n' roll. Cause that's the only other term that the other bands have shunned away from, forever. We wanted to put on leather, and studded bracelets and go out there and rock. |
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| Gnate: So is Slipknot playing on the whole tour with you guys? |
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| Gnate: How long have you been going? |
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| Dez: This is our 4th week, two weeks before the record came out. |
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| Gnate: What do you think of Type O' Negative? A lot of people call them goth. |
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| Dez: No I just think their really dark basically. We're getting ready to tour in Europe with Type O' Negative, and Static X. We did some Halloween shows about two years ago with Type O' Negative, it was really fun. |
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| Gnate: Their coming up here. |
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| Dez: Yeah, I think Peter Steals is a total gentleman, so if you get an interview with him, you'll have to take the time and tell him hello. |
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| Gnate: Do you prefer to eat or wear animals? |
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| Gnate: Yeah, the leather pants. |
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| Dez: Bring her to the bus tonight. But not for me, but Meegs will go crazy. |
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| Angel C.: How many days did it take, and how many people did you audition for Rayna's replacement? |
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| Dez: It took weeks, and we auditioned probably eight, some guys some girls. |
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| Angel C.: That's not very much. |
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| Dez: Flied in people from other states and shit. |
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| Hip Online Interview with Mike |
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| When Coal Chamber first stepped out in the music world with their Roadrunner Records debut, they were immediately tagged as Korn wannabe's. Three years later, the Chamber has brushed off the harsh criticism, and have paid their dues with three years worth of Ozzfest stints, and numerous tours with Pantera, Megadeth, and Sevendust. Their bottom-heavy funk metal has earned them a dedicated fan base throughout the world and they have been getting awesome reviews everywhere they play. Now we're just waiting for a new record. It's been a while, and they do realize that, but they have been hard at work on an album that they believe can send them to the front of the new wave of Neo-metal, a genre that has evolved tenfold in the past few years. We had a chance to chat with Mike, Coal Chamber's gifted drummer, about the past, present, and new album, and about life as seen only through Coal Chamber's eyes. Here's how it went... |
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| Tell me about the new album. The new album is called Chamber Music . We wanted to break off from the whole scene we got lumped into after the first album, so we kind of changed directions. It's still heavy, but this one is more three-dimensional. We've grown a lot, matured. I think if you're going to compare it to anything, you'll compare it to like forty different albums. It's not lumped into one category; we don't want to be cornered into one group of people. It's definitely different. There's keyboards, there's singing, it's just awesome. Did you still use Amir on this album? (He produced Coal Chamber's first album) No, we used Josh Abraham, who produced Orgy's album. Mixing it was Dave Ogilvi, he did Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson, all that stuff. What was the whole recording process like this time around? Did you have more time? Well, with the first album, all the songs we're like four years old. With these, we came off Ozzfest and we had to write the shit. They stuck us up in this barn in Boston called Longview Farms. We got locked up in this barn and we wrote thirty-three songs. Whoever had an idea, if they came out at three in the morning, we would still jam on it. It wasn't one person writing everything. I wrote some lyrics, Dez wrote some of the music. There was a contribution by everyone. We narrowed it down to seventeen songs. You can't really have thirty-three on an album. Did you run into any problems during the whole deal? Yeah. The engineer, Chad, was in Philadelphia driving drunk, drove off a cliff, and killed himself. The album was supposed to come out in February. It's now June, and the album doesn't come out until August 10. |
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| what goals have you set with that in mind? |
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| It's still heavy. I think this album is heavier than the first one. It's heavier in more than just guitars and screaming. It's more along the lines of Nine Inch Nails heavy, it's emotional. Our goal is longevity. You look at a career like Ozzy's, and you want to be that. He gets bigger every day. We want to take the slow road. We don't want to be huge with one hit and be gone the next day. We want to slowly build, and have that fan base, which we already have. As it's going right now, it's perfect. We've got a lot of good things lined up; everything is going very well. |
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| Are you done shooting the new video? |
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| Yeah. I just flew in yesterday from LA. It's "Shock the Monkey" (Peter Gabriel), we did it with Ozzy. Miguel and Dez have wanted to do that cover since way back when they were first jamming. It just never happened on the first album. We were lazy, I guess. On the new album, Josh said, 'Let's do it,' so we did it. We did the song, then we went to our manager, Sharon (Osbourne, Ozzy's wife), and asked if Ozzy could do the part. He's a Peter Gabriel fan; he listens to him before he goes onstage. And he kind of sounds like him, the higher parts at least. So he agreed on doing it, we did it, and it came out totally amazing. |
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| So Ozzy's on the cd and in the video? |
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| Yeah. The video concept is this: Dez is standing there at the beginning and he's holding this ball of light and the ball of light is Ozzy's head floating above his hand. We drive through this tunnel in this old black Cadillac, and Ozzy's head is flying all around inside the tunnel while he's singing, then it goes to live shots. Then at the end, we have real monkeys, those little spider monkeys all over the place. They were like straight out of Pet Semetary, all evil. At the end, we come driving out of the tunnel and it explodes. It was really cool to do. You'll enjoy it. |
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| Any idea when it'll be pushed? |
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| It's going to MTV in September. We're going to release another single first, we don't want to try to get big with a cover like a lot of bands are doing. We want to set our own identity first. And if it sucks, then we'll go to the "Shock the Monkey" single. |
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| You're touring with the Insane Clown Posse this summer? |
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| It starts in July. We're doing shows for four and five hundred to twelve thousand seat arenas. |
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| You did Ozzfest for three years, opened for Pantera on two big tours. Did you reach the audience you hoped to reach the last couple of years? |
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| Oh, definitely. That's how we got Sharon Osbourne as our manager. That's where everything started taking off. I think the whole Ozzfest thing was the best thing we could have done. We had so much fun with all the bands, it just stemmed down to where we are now. Ozzfest was the pinnacle of our growing together as a band. |
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| Did you ever do Dynamo (Annual Festival in Europe)? |
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| Yeah, we did it two years in a row. No, it seems real diverse. When we did it, Korn and Marilyn Manson were the big bands. Now it's opened up a lot more. That's the cool thing about festivals over there. Actually, we're doing one in Japan with Marilyn Manson and Garbage. That's diversity! |
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| What do you think of this year's Ozzfest lineup? |
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| We were going to do a show in LA, but we're not going to do it. It's real diverse this year, Primus and Slayer, you know? It's cool though. I'd like to do it, but we're trying to get away from it after doing it three years in a row. |
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| If someone threw Woodstock at you, would you take it? |
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| Yeah, but the timing is just kind of bad. We don't want to do anything half-assed. We want to come out full blast. We're going to have props and cool shit. We don't want to do a show for the sake of doing it. We don't want to be unprofessional. |
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| What kind of plans do you have for the rest of the year after the ICP tour? |
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| Tour our asses off. That's the reason why we have so many fans now, without radio or MTV. Now they'll both be picking us up, and we tour on top of that, we don't know how good it could really be. The fans want to see us live. We want to play live. The last time we toured, we were out for eighteen months straight. I'll play every day, I love it. Some guys bitch about being out so much, we're not like that at all. Touring is it. It's the best thing about being in a band. |
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| Cool. That's about all. Do you have anything to add? |
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| We're finally coming out, full bore, and I hope fans can respect that we wanted to take our time and do it right. |
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| Right on, man. I'm looking forward to hearing it and seeing you guys. Good luck to you! |
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