Coal Chamber reunion a ‘blessing’

One rule that is set in stone for the reunited Coal Chamber, who will play the Cotillion on Tuesday, is no hard drugs. Drug use by two band members, guitarist Miguel “Meegs” Rascon and drummer Mike Cox, had played a key role in breaking apart Coal Chamber in 2003, when the group was seen as one of metal’s rising stars.

The band’s 1997 self-titled first album shook up the scene with its energetic brand of melodic metal laced with elements of goth and industrial. The song “Loco” became a major hit and the album sold more than 500,000 copies. Two more studio albums followed, “Chamber Music” in 1999 and “Dark Days” in 2002, and the band’s star continued to rise. Then the band imploded.

In 2002, the tensions grew to the point that the band flew apart in the most public of ways – a fight on stage in Lubbock, Texas, between Rascon and singer Dez Fafara, during which Fafara was smacked in the head by the headstock of Rascon’s guitar. Fafara grabbed the mike, declared that fans had just seen the last Coal Chamber show and stormed off stage.

Fafara makes no bones about how destructive drug use was for Coal Chamber’s musical and personal chemistry.

“I think hard drugs get in the way of life, don’t they?” he said in a mid-February phone interview. “They get in the way of life. They get in the way of family. They get in the way of friendships. And just because they were doing hard drugs and I don’t do hard drugs doesn’t mean I wasn’t part of the breakup, because I’m a recluse. I’m very anti-social. And all of that on the road made me even get more so.”

For years it looked like Coal Chamber would be nothing more than a distant memory and missed opportunity for all of the band members.

“We didn’t talk for at least seven or eight years,” Fafara said. “But you have to understand, it wasn’t just a band falling apart at that point. It was a band falling apart that was my life, that was their life. It was not just our art. It was our life. I had a family to support at the time, with kids. They had a different lifestyle than I did. And when we broke up, it was terrible and we had no conversations with each other for years and years and years.”

Indeed, Fafara, in order to support his family and stay involved in music, quickly formed his new band, the still-active DevilDriver.

Featuring a more aggressive and harsher sound than Coal Chamber, DevilDriver has gained a decent following over the course of six albums and extensive touring, with its 2013 album, “Winter Kills,” becoming its highest charting album. Fafara plans to record a new DevilDriver album this summer, with a tour to follow early in 2016. Ironically, it was six years ago, while DevilDriver was on tour, that the first step toward a Coal Chamber reunion took place.

“Meegs came to a DevilDriver gig and we played ‘Loco’ on stage,” Fafara said. “And at that moment, I felt like wow, I’m missing this. I’m missing this song. I’m missing this guy. We started to talk just very briefly every once in awhile.”

Rascon and Fox had both gotten off of drugs, but Fafara wasn’t going to jump right into a Coal Chamber reunion. So the three former bandmates kept in touch, slowly rebuilding their friendship. Then they got an offer to play the 2012 Soundwave Festivals in Australia. Seeing this as a chance to play a few shows to see how it felt to play live again, Fafara, Rascon and Cox accepted the offer and brought in Chela Rhea Harper to fill in on bass for the shows. (Coal Chambers’ previous bassist, Nadja Peulen, was invited to join but declined at that point.)

The Soundwave shows went well and the band booked more touring. The thought of making new music together, though, was planted during that first Soundwave run when Rascon shared a couple of songs he’d been writing with Fafara.

“I said, ‘Well, what do you have in mind for this?’” Fafara said. “It doesn’t sound like anything you’re doing for your project. It sounds like Coal Chamber, but … there’s something else really going on here.’ He just said, ‘Yeah, it’s open to whatever, to interpretation.’ So I said ‘OK, when I get home, send me those songs.’”

The creative spark was back, and before long, Fafara had secured a deal for Coal Chamber with Napalm Records (which also signed DevilDriver), had producer Mark Lewis on board to produce what would become the new Coal Chamber album “Rivals,” and then got Peulen to rejoin Coal Chamber.

The songs for “Rivals” came together quickly.

“It was like breakneck speed what we were doing,” Fafara said. “Like, ‘OK, send me a song. Let me write.’ And as fast as I could write (lyrics and vocal melodies) to them, they (Rascon and Cox) were sending them to me, man.”

“Rivals” will be released May 12, and Fafara, in this interview, could hardly contain his enthusiasm for the music of the reborn Coal Chamber.

“It is our signature sound, but it’s much more,” Fafara said. “If I had to put it into a sentence what is different about Coal Chamber then and Coal Chamber now, I think it’s a more mature sound, but it’s even more fat, with groove and hook than what it had before. … The hook and groove and riff and the feel of the songs, they’re not as one-dimensional as what we used to do.”

Fafara is relishing his second chance with Coal Chamber.

“How many times in life do you have a chance to rekindle a friendship, a lost friendship, rekindle not only a lost friendship, but something as beautiful as art, start making art together, music?” Fafara said. “I wish everyone … that had a falling out with someone would have a chance to do what I’ve done because it’s been just nothing but a blessing.”

This story was originally published March 12, 2015 at 2:59 PM with the headline "Coal Chamber reunion a ‘blessing’."