DEVILDRIVER: New Video Interview With DEZ FAFARA

Jo Schüftan of Horns Up Rocks! conducted an interview with vocalist Dez Fafara of California metallers DEVILDRIVER on October 16 at Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York. You can now watch the chat below.

In a recent interview with Ned of the WGRD 97.9 FM radio station in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Dez stated about DEVILDRIVER's split with longtime record label Roadrunner and new deal with Napalm Records, "[It was] just time to do it, I believe. Roadrunner's gotten sold out to Warner Brothers; they've become a whole new animal. The guy, Monte Conner, who signed us [to Roadrunner], isn't over there anymore, a lot of the other bands aren't over there anymore, and it's gonna start dissipating as they go. They're picking up more classic artists — I mean, they're starting to deal with LYNYRD SKYNYRD and RATT and this and that — and it was just time to go. We needed another label, someone who understood what we did. Napalm came to the table and said, 'You know what? Look, we love the music and we're behind it.'"

He continued, "We were with Roadrunner a long time — they did a great job with my career; I'd been with them since late '94, so I owed them a lot, I owed them a great deal. But when the internal things change and they start moving the furniture around in the house and everything and it's unrecognizable, then it's time to move locations, which is what we did. And it's important for a metal band to have a label that understands the music, understands what we wanna do, the kind of touring we do and wants to get behind it. DEVILDRIVER is rarely off the road, and so it's important for a label to be behind it when you're on the road. You want them to do the same work that you're doing. Napalm seems like a great fit and we're looking forward to seeing how this record does."

Asked when fans can expect to see a new DEVILDRIVER studio album, Dez said, "Right now I'm hearing sometime around late September [of 2013]. The [other] guys [in the band] start recording in December, I start recording [vocals] in January, and we leave for tour in March with CANNIBAL CORPSE overseas for a big co-headline run. So I've gotta be done by the end of January. And we're looking for a really bad-ass tour wrapped around it as well; we 've talking to a bunch of people right now."

On the topic of what the new DEVILDRIVER material sounds like, Dez said, "I'm in the back lounge [of the tour bus] in the process of writing it. We've got a really spectacular record coming. I mean, the record is so diverse. We've kind of taken a jump ahead and also laid back into our groove and where we come from, so I think it's gonna be a really outstanding record. But we're not prepared to play out live with it. I'm in the back still writing lyrics and such."