DEZ FAFARA Says Now Is 'A Perfect Time' For COAL CHAMBER Reunion

Brian Fischer-Giffin of Australia's Loud magazine recently conducted an interview with Dez Fafara (DEVILDRIVER, COAL CHAMBER) about COAL CHAMBER's upcoming reunion tour as part of Australia's Soundwave Festival. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

On how the COAL CHAMBER reunion came about:

"In '05, Meegs [Miguel Rascn, guitar] started coming around. He apologized to my wife for the way things went down with COAL CHAMBER, because when COAL CHAMBER split up I had to move my family into a one-bedroom apartment and start all over. So when he apologized to my wife, I thought, 'Well, OK, he's got a big heart inside him. And he's clean off the hard drugs now, let's see if this goes awhile.' So let's fast forward a few years to '09, he and Mikey [Mike Cox, drums] were still clean off hard drugs, Meegs came out and did 'Loco' onstage with DEVILDRIVER. After that he gave me a hug onstage and in my ear he said, 'Let's do this again.'"

On COAL CHAMBER's future beyond Soundwave:

We're not talking about that, man. We're just gonna do Soundwave and that's all for right now. We're gonna see what happens from there. Since we've announced we're gonna be coming down, we've had offers to do tours all over the world. We haven't even talked about that. We haven't even discussed it. We've also had record deals thrown at us four record deals in the last week thrown at us but we're just not even discussing it. We're coming down to Soundwave to be happy, be friends and play good music, and after that I'll discuss everything."

On how he feels about performing COAL CHAMBER songs again:

"They've been clean off hard drugs, they've got their lives together, I've got my life with DEVILDRIVER, we miss playing together onstage. I miss... Those guys have got a serious fucking aura on stage, no doubt about it. I miss that. I miss those songs. I miss everything about it. So we're gonna revisit it and the best place to do it is Down Under. It's a perfect time right now. It's ten years later, everybody's fucking one hundred percent focused, and we're coming down for one reason only, and that's to own the day and take everybody to the bank. Period."

On how it feels to be touring with SLIPKNOT and SYSTEM OF A DOWN again

"I can remember when COAL CHAMBER took SLIPKNOT out on their first U.S. tour for eight weeks. I wanted to go see what the band was about in Dallas, their second night. I walked in on their second song, walked back into my bus, white as a ghost, and told everybody on the bus, 'You better go witness what's happening here. This band is unreal.' Now cut to ten years later, they're one of the biggest bands on the planet, Corey Taylor's doing everything from singing in STONE SOUR to going on stage singing PINK FLOYD songs and with Spongebob Squarepants doing all these songs for kids. To watch these artists grow with their careers over time has been incredible and to do this festival with them is a great thing."

"[SYSTEM OF A DOWN and SLIPKNOT] have held up over time. I've no doubt that COAL CHAMBER would have held up over time, but it's good that we went away because it was only 50-60 per cent capacity because people were fucked up on drugs. Now you're gonna get us at 100 per cent capacity and you're gonna get the real deal, what you should have seen in the first place. So hold on to your hats and get loco with me."

Read the entire interview from Loud magazine.