By Carl Begai
More often that not, band biographies are loaded with show-off information and adjective-tweaked factoids meant to sell the artist in question to the press. Makes sense if a label or management is pushing a new signing, but it comes off as trying to sell snow to an Eskimo when the band has been around for over a decade and has seven albums to choose from. In short, trying to sell a veteran and altogether successful band’s new work on hype rather than substance is insulting to the folks behind the music. This is particularly true of DevilDriver and vocalist Dez Fafara, who launched the band in 2002 after carving a path into the distortion-driven music scene with Coal Chamber beginning in 1993. He’s quite content and able to to let his music do the talking, as on the new DevilDriver album Trust No One.
“I think I’m still around because I’m a no-bullshit guy,” says Fafara. “I don’t have time for the purists in music or any of that. People who know me, that are close to me, they appreciate the guy that I am because I don’t have the time to bullshit you.”
Thus we leave it to him to describe DevilDriver; the only overview that really matters in the end.
“Every single record has a DevilDriver sound and a signature groove but they’re very different from one another. Beast is very different from Pray For Villains, and Trust No One is very different from our last record. People can’t pin us down and I think that’s a good thing. They started calling us groove metal and I thought that was too broad a term, so they started calling us the California groove machine. It’s like, ‘Okay, I’ll take that…’ (laughs).”
A nifty little stamp, sure, but it still reeks of desperation on the part of the media or management as trying to put DevilDriver in a convenient little box.
“Sometimes you have to go with monikers because some people need a tag,” Fafara offers. “Long ago when I started DevilDriver, I wanted a signature sound and I knew I wanted something different. I’ve got my ear to the ground, I hear what’s going on in metal, and I see a lot of bands putting out the same record. There’s been hype and critical acclaim behind records that I listen to and I’m thinking ‘What..? Why?’ For me it’s like ‘Let’s do something different, let’s stand out,’ and I think on Trust No One – especially on the new album – that we’ve done something that’s our own. We’ve upped the sound and I’ve definitely upped the players within the band, and it has become a monster.” Continue reading BraveWords Interview: DEVILDRIVER – Raising Hell With Heart And Soul
