CHIMAIRA Guitarist: 'Things Are Better Than They've Ever Been For Us Right Now'

Simon Milburn of Australia's The Metal Forge recently conducted an interview with CHIMAIRA guitarist Rob Arnold. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

On the response to their 2005 album, "Chimaira":

"It seems like people's attention spans nowadays are less than maybe they used to be in the days of METALLICA and stuff like that when they could have those longer, epic songs and everybody loved them. So we realized that a few people didn't quite have the attention span for that. But I also, I don't want to say that 100% because we don't know if the album could've done better had it have come out on Ferret (Music) or Nuclear Blast (Records). You know what I mean? It came out on Roadrunner (Records, the band's home since 2001's 'Pass out of Existence') and all that was during the time where we were trying to get off Roadrunner and we were having drummer problems and this and that. I feel like that that album could've done more had it have been handled differently, and it just happened to be a record that came out at a bad time and things like that. So I don't really know, y'know? But in terms of overall, it's done well. Our fan base has grown. It's been a nice setup for this next record. I think people are really anticipating it to hear whether this new 'Resurrection' is gonna be more like the self-titled or more like 'The Impossibility of Reason'. We're extremely proud of it. We wouldn't change a thing about it. We're glad that that record is what it is and that it came out when it came out and it's just part of our life, y'know what I mean?"

On the split with Roadrunner Records:

"Y'know we just felt like that they were promoting us as well as we would have liked. From the get-go, of course we were real excited to be signed to Roadrunner Records. But because we weren't NICKELBACKs, they didn't really give us a lot of support. They put our records out for us, which a lot of bands get, but we needed more than that. We wanted more development. We wanted more bargaining. We wanted more of a faith in our band. We wanted them to love the band and wanna work it. Because we didn't feel that they were willing to provide that at the level that we needed, we said that we're gonna find it somewhere else, and that's when we started trying to get off the label. We had to break our contract with them because we still owed them a couple of records but we knew that the only way for us to keep moving forward and moving up would be to put out this next record, 'Resurrection', on a different label. That was our goal a year ago, and that went well for us, and things are better than they've ever been for us right now, and the album hasn't even come out yet! So we're certainly in for a ride!"

On how the band hooked up with Nuclear Blast (Europe) and Ferret Music (North America):

"Well, you're really not allowed to shop while you're still on a label. So we didn't really do a lot of that and we kinda had to keep any talks we had on the down low. But it was kind of like as soon as we got released from Roadrunner, we instantly started talking to Nuclear Blast and we instantly started talking to Ferret because we had heard that they were interested. We really liked their deals. We really liked their enthusiasm. They [Nuclear Blast] came out to one of our shows in Germany and said, 'We love the band. We want to sign the band,' and that's what we were looking for as CHIMAIRA. We want a person to come to us like that and say that they love what we're doing and that they want to get behind it. So we were like 'Fuck yeah, we need to deal with these guys!' They are the biggest metal label in Europe and everything over there. We need to be with these guys and we need to do this right."

Read the entire interview at www.themetalforge.com.