KILL DEVIL HILL Is Working On New Music

KILL DEVIL HILL is working on material for the band's long-awaited follow-up to 2013's "Revolution Rise" album. "Dewey [Bragg, vocals] and I have been writing a bunch of stuff," guitarist Mark Zavon told Damnation Vault in a new interview. "We're going to try and put something out, maybe this year, maybe early next year. We'll see what happens."

He added: "We've been tripping away at the amount of… We've got probably 15 demos or something. But we're going to do a little touring. It looks like we've got some stuff… I don't know, I don't want to say anything yet because we don't know exactly what's going to happen. But it looks like we'll be doing a little bit of touring here this spring and get out and start playing again, which will be great, I've missed playing with those guys, hanging out with them, all of that stuff. It's going to be great to blow the dust off of it and get out in front of the fans again because there's a lot of people hitting us up all the time on social media, you know on the Internet and stuff, 'When are you going to come and play? When are you going to come back to town?' They want to hear the stuff and we want to play it. So, we just have to cross those streams and make it happen."

Zavon also confirmed that KILL DEVIL HILL has recruited Nico D'Arnese to play bass following the recent departure of Rex Brown (PANTERA),who played on the band's first two albums.

"He's an Italian guy, a great bass player, " Mark said. "He was a friend of ours for a while, but we really had no designs for having him play in the band or anything. I'm pretty loyal, and we were waiting for Rex to hopefully come around and decide that he wanted to do some more KILL DEVIL HILL. But, you know, it's just not the right time for him. God bless him, and I support everything he's doing with his solo career. I think it makes him happy. Life's short. You've got to be happy. So, he's going to do that, and we finally had an answer in January. He finally gave us an answer on that, and so we picked up this guy, Nico, who is really excited to be involved."

Rex spoke about his exit from KILL DEVIL HILL during a recent interview with Loudwire.

"They are some of my best friends in the world," he said. "I just felt like I was keeping a damper on them, so might as well take care of this thing now. It's a very amicable split and everybody's happy with the whole deal. It probably should have happened a year ago, but you never know. You've just got to keep things open. But I'm doing my thing and they're doing theirs and it's all cool."

He added: "I called the guys. I didn't want to write an e-mail. I called them individually and just reached out and said, 'Do what you need to do and I'm sorry if I held you up in any way or form,' and they were kind of cheered to know that that was the news that I wanted to do. They wanted to get out and play.

"We're still close, close friends, but it's just if they're being booked, I don't want people to think that I'm going to be there, 'cause I'm not. That's the one thing I want to get across. Yes, it's an amicable split, but it's not that big of news. I think people saw the writing on the wall, and maybe if they couldn't, they will now."

Original KILL DEVIL HILL drummer Vinny Appice (BLACK SABBATH, DIO) left the band in March 2014. He has since been replaced by Johnny Kelly (DANZIG, TYPE O NEGATIVE).

"Revolution Rise" was released in October 2013 via Century Media Records.