DEVILDRIVER's eleventh album, "Strike And Kill", arrived in July with a rebuilt lineup and a frontman who had spent two years keeping a medical secret. Speaking to Blabbermouth's David E. Gehlke, Dez Fafara talked through all of it.
The lineup is the headline. Original bassist Jon Miller is back, and Gabe Mangold has come in on lead guitar, alongside rhythm guitarist Alex Lee and drummer Davier Pérez. Fafara's first conversation with Miller ran three and a half hours. "There was laughter, tears. I was always closest to Jon Miller and John Boecklin, my drummer. He had to come off tour to get his proverbial shit together, and his life is going wonderfully. He obviously understands when I say, 'Write for the logo.' He gets what DEVILDRIVER is."
That phrase — write for the logo — was the entire creative brief. "Instead of them asking, 'What direction?' the conversation was, 'What direction are we going?' I said, 'Look at the logo, guys. Write a killer record for the logo. You know what DEVILDRIVER sounds like.'" He is blunt about why the band needs a compass at all: "We're a different kind of metal band. We don't fit in. We're like the square peg in a round hole. We're this groovy thing, and I was raised on punk, goth and psychobilly."
He also overruled his label on length. Told that nine or ten songs would do, Fafara refused. "I go, 'No. This has to be what it is.' If someone is going to spend money on a physical copy, let's give them their money's worth. If they're going to take the time to sit down and stream, let's give them their time's worth." Thirteen songs, he adds, with thirteen being a lucky number for him. He wrote, he says, "like it was my first record" and simultaneously "as if it was my last record ever."
On his health, the picture is stable. The vertigo attack that put him in an ambulance and cost the band a year of touring led to MRIs that turned up a tumour near his salivary gland, above the jaw. The diagnosis came on Christmas Eve, and it was not cancer — "you can only imagine Christmas Eve at my house that night was fucking off the hook." It has since stayed the same size or shrunk slightly. Surgery would only be considered if it grew, and carries real risk: "I could lose my blinking, my smiling, my singing, all that."
Preparation for the upcoming tour dates is unglamorous — treadmill, clean eating, warming up twice a day, sometimes running the full set twice in his home booth. "I would say to every single vocalist: make sure you can sing at home."
The response after he went public floored him. "Every artist right now who we can mention has called me, texted me or written to me. I carried this weight for two years with my bandmates, my wife and my kids. How long do you keep that from people?" And his verdict on where he stands: "I'm blessed to be here still. I'm blessed to be alive after everything."
Source: blabbermouth.net