Dez Fafara kept a diagnosis to himself for two years. With DEVILDRIVER's eleventh album "Strike And Kill" now out, the frontman has decided to talk about it.
Fafara, who turned 60 in May, has a non-cancerous tumor near a salivary gland above his jaw, close to his ear. It was found after a bout of vertigo that put him in an ambulance and cost COAL CHAMBER a tour. "I had vertigo, put me in an ambulance, put me in an emergency room, MRI, taking down a year of touring, constant MRI machines, and then they pulled up a tumor," he told BLABBERMOUTH.NET.
Then came the wait. "We had two months to wait until Christmas Eve, and then Christmas Eve is when I went in to get the diagnosis to find out if it was cancer or not, and it wasn't. So you can only imagine Christmas Eve at my house that night was off the hook." He added, dryly, that it was the first time in eight or nine years he had wanted a drink. He didn't have one.
The news since has been unexpectedly good. Surgery is only an option if the growth becomes larger or painful — and it has been doing the opposite. "It's gotten smaller. So it has to get bigger for them to operate, or it's very dangerous. I could lose my blinking, my smiling, my singing, all that." His vocals are not currently at risk. The vertigo, doctors told him, was the body's alarm system.
His routine now is regimented. "I'm getting on the treadmill and eating right. Warming up twice a day; sometimes I do the set twice." He advises every vocalist to build a way to sing at home. "I try to skateboard and surf. I just try to move."
Going public, after a three-hour appearance on the "Garza Podcast", produced a response he was not braced for. "My phone was going crazy. Every artist right now who we can mention has called me, texted me or written to me. The fanbase for sure was like, 'We're here for you. You got this.' I carried this weight for two years with my bandmates, my wife and my kids. The metal community — and the punk rock community — has been there with me for 30 years. How long do you keep that from people?"
"Strike And Kill" marks the return of original bassist Jon Miller and the arrival of lead guitarist Gabe Mangold, alongside rhythm guitarist Alex Lee and drummer Davier Pérez — 13 songs Fafara refused to trim. "I'm blessed to be here still. I'm blessed to be alive after everything. Even the things I'm going through right now."
Source: blabbermouth.net