It is 5 p.m. and Dez Fafara has just woken up. Today is Tuesday, Jan. 27 and his band DevilDriver is playing direct support to Opeth, a band that is changing the boundaries of the heavy metal genre. It has been more than a year since I have seen Fafara in person. That was just before his former band, Coal Chamber, called it quits.
I make my way to the back lounge of the DevilDriver tour bus. In the dim, couch-laden back hideaway, with blasting air-conditioning (causing me to rethink wearing a skirt ever again), Fafara greets me in a gray thermal shirt, pants appropriate for lounging, loafer-style slippers and sleep dust in the corner of his left eye.
Nevertheless, he maintains his metal image, with facial tattoos peering around his goatee and rings in his septum and ears.
Fafara opens up immediately. He divulges that he has never enjoyed listening to Opeth. Within the metal world, Opeth is considered one of those bands everyone is supposed to like.
Fafara tries to save a little face by saying Opeth is a bunch of great guys, and he is starting to become a fan after seeing them nightly. He also takes the opportunity to bring up Moonspell, the opening act on the tour. Aside from enjoying their company for a post-show shindig, he praises their musical variety without going into much detail.
But what about Fafara's new band? DevilDriver's style is heavier than that of the now defunct Coal Chamber. This style is tailored for Fafara.
"I hung in with Coal Chamber for as long as I could," he says. "They wrote all the songs, and to tell you the truth, it was waning on me."
One of the key advantages to Fafara being a part of DevilDriver is he is able to write with people who are like-minded musically. Fafara expels exuberance when he explains that he gets to write all the lyrics for DevilDriver, and the band works together in creating the music. When he was with Coal Chamber, the members wrote songs and parts of songs without any other members present.
Fafara and I take a quick break from the questions as his brother calls. Fafara sent him to find "pirate rum" at Costco.
Pirate rum?
"It's the best!" he says. "It was the first rum made in Jamaica and was one of the causes of the pirate wars." As I suspected, the official name is not pirate rum, but Planter's Gold. His brother calls back in need of a description and from the sound of things, he manages to find pirate rum for his big brother. After the rum talk, Fafara needs a reminder about continuing the conversation about his musical career.
"In the beginning, Coal Chamber was a defining metal band," Fafara says shaking his head. "If I had known it would spawn so many shitty bands, I never would have done it." He is referring to the hordes of nu-metal bands that infiltrated the charts in the late '90s and afterward.
Despite his disdain for what his former band inspired, Fafara does not mind answering a few Chamber-related questions. He thinks of Coal Chamber as an old girlfriend, he says; you take her home for Christmas five years in a row, then the sixth you come alone. Everyone will ask where she is and what happened.
The big buzz about DevilDriver is that it's Fafara's new project that's supposed to make everyone check it out. That kind of logic does not work for many fans. He lays it out: "We're everything heavy and good in your CD case."
Now that the band has released their self-titled album, they will be touring constantly. Fafara says that this is in his best interest. He cannot stand being at home and needs to be constantly doing something, which is why life on the road is good for him. "The whole band is out for one thing on this tour: all out destruction," he says with a grin.
Reach the reporter at chelsea.ide@asu.edu.
