Live-Metal.Net - Interviews: Chimaira

Over the course of their first three full-length albums, Chimaira developed nicely into one of the leading American metal bands, winning a slew of devoted fans in the process. But their latest release, Resurrection, is on another level, a modern metal masterpiece filled with Mark Hunter’s tortured vocals, the brutal guitar attack of Rob Arnold and Matt DeVries, stunning leads by Arnold, a thunderous rhythm section in bassist Jim LaMarca and drummer Andols Herrick (returning to the fold after leaving before the recording of the self-titled album released in 2005), and the eerie, atmospheric keyboards of Chris Spicuzza. “We have become so goddamn powerful,” Hunter chants on the title track, and the band backs up his claim every step of the way. In late February, Chimaira hit the ground running, setting out on the road on the first-ever No Fear Music Tour with metalcore giants Killswitch Engage, power metal warriors DragonForce and the Southern-flavored metal act He Is Legend. On the second day of the tour’s sold-out two-night stand at the famed 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., Greg Maki of Live-Metal.net caught up with DeVries to chat about Resurrection, the band’s split from Roadrunner Records and more.

Live-Metal: I heard you just came from the International Spy Museum.

Matt DeVries: Yeah, I went to a spy museum.

It was cool. I’d never been to anything like it. My buddy who’s from Cleveland lives here now, working out in D.C., and he’s like, “I wanted to go over since I was here,” so we just went. It was cool, your basic history on spies, CIA , KGB, all that stuff. Yeah, it was interesting.

I try to, yeah. I try to do something, experience instead of just sitting on the bus or something, especially when you’re playing a venue like 9:30 Club and you’re in this beautiful neighborhood. [laughs] You try to venture out a little bit, yeah.

I got Resurrection a few days ago, and I’ve been listening to it nonstop the last couple days.

Yeah, we couldn’t be happier. The reviews have been fantastic.

I couldn’t be happier. Personally, we think it’s our most brutally honest record, and we’re at, we think, our best point we’ve ever been in as a band. Everyone’s happy, getting along. We wrote a record that we really wanted to and we love the record. So we couldn’t be happier with the response. We were just like kind of laid back with this writing process, not really worrying about what people thought about it. So it’s just an extra perk that people actually love it.

It seems, to me at least, that it’s not really going off into really new stuff for you, but it’s taking everything that you guys do and kind of pushing it further, like it’s all been building so far to this.

Yeah, I think you nailed it. All of it was basically subconscious. We weren’t really trying to do anything. We were just kind of, I think, writing with our roots. What I’m most proud of is saying something like it’s real hard to be an original band nowadays in metal, but I think we’re not the most original, but if you listen to Chimaira, you know it’s Chimaira. You know what I mean? I’m real proud of that.

How does a song like that come together? Do you sit down and say, “Let’s write a 10-minute song”?

No, actually that kind of just happened. It was one of those songs that the melodic instrumental part with mostly acoustic was written by Rob, and then for the first time ever, we kind of combined three songs in one. I had all these riffs, like these heavy brutal riffs that you’ll hear in the beginning and end of the song. And then Mark just started jamming out an intro, and he’s like, “This might work together.” We just experimented with it and just started piecing the puzzle together, I guess, because usually you’ll write a song or write, at least, most of a song and then put in your two cents and then build off of that with stuff that’s new, not stuff that’s already written. This time, for some reason it just kind of worked together, and in our opinion, it needed to be that long, we didn’t try to make it that long.

We started writing a little bit in February [2006], when we had some time off and we were getting Andols back into fold and into the swing of things, like separately, so we had a little bit of a jumpstart on writing. But we didn’t really start with each other until about July. We took a little bit of time off when we got home in June, then maybe late July we started writing again.

One of the things I like about the album is the way there are no gaps, all the songs flow into each other.

I don’t think so. I think, you know, initially we had the songs, and usually, Mark will give his ideas for initial sequencing, and all of us just agreed—I think Rob had his two cents about it—but all of us were kind of like, “Yeah, that makes sense flowing it like that.” And then until it was the final mix and master, I didn’t realize it was gonna be back to back, and I love albums like that, like Carcass Necroticism and stuff like that. So, I don’t know, maybe it was just luck that it just worked out like that.

Yeah, I when I start listening to it, I just have to listen to the whole thing.

The other thing I really like is the cover art. How important, in general, is the art and packaging?

I think it’s real important, especially to us. If you notice, most of our records, the last two especially and this one, it’s more of an iconic image. Nothing too busy. And I think each record stands out in their own way, where if you’re looking through CDs, you’re like, “Oh, that’s kind of cool.” Basically, it represents us and the record, Resurrection, just kind of like a changing or rebirth. The creature’s changing, so are we, kind of resurrecting, if you will. And, yeah, the artist [Dennis Siberijn], just the other day I looked up on his web site [www.monumentstudio.com] and all his art is sick. The dude’s so talented, and I’m real happy that we got to work with him and have him do the record cover.

How is it different now having Andols back in the band than it was with him in the band originally?

It’s 100 percent different from when he left, but it’s exactly the same enthusiasm that he had when we first start being in Chimaira. He’s got the drive, he’s got the happiness, the hunger for being in a band. He really proved to us that he wanted to do this more than anything in the world, and it’s a great feeling. It’s like a rejuvenation for all of us, lighting a fire under our ass, like real happy to do it again.

What was the reason for that and what are you getting now that you weren’t before?

In a nutshell, Roadrunner just kind of, in our eyes, dropped the ball on the last record. We didn’t see—we had a lot of kids complaining that they weren’t in stores, the record. There wasn’t a lot of ads out. We were proud of that record, and we were pushing it as hard as possible, touring as much as possible, but not really reaping the benefits because we had no help. You need the help from the label. We needed the extra push, which we didn’t get. There was a lot of people at the label that really loved us, and we couldn’t be happier with Roadrunner. We owed them a debt of gratitude for getting us to where we are, but there were those people and their higher-ups that kind of like didn’t let them spend the money that they wanted to spend on us and kind of put us down on the totem pole. We wanted to be let go for a long time, and they finally said yes, the higher-ups were like, “Fine, let ’em go.” No strings attached, didn’t owe them anymore records, nothing. So we couldn’t happier, and we already had interest from both Ferret and Nuclear Blast Europe, and both labels, the enthusiasm and the marketing plans behind everything they were talking about were just incredible. They’re just fans of music, you know what I mean? Obviously, it’s a business, you’ve gotta make money, you’ve gotta look at numbers, but it seems like they were more interested in signing us because they were actually fans of Chimaira, which is a real good feeling. So we couldn’t be happier so far. Our record’s not even out and, personally, I’ve done about 85 interviews, literally, in the last two months. That’s more than I’ve done in the last two years before signing to these labels. And I see ads already. So I couldn’t be more excited so far. Yeah, it’s good.

I think it was a given. What’s awesome was we didn’t even submit. We were asked by Killswitch. What’s so cool about Killswitch is they’re blowing up and they’re one of the biggest bands out there right now in the metal scene, and they’re the most humble, down-to-earth, like they really respect where they are type dudes, and we’ve been friends with them, we were on the same level, like, years ago and we toured with them, and they remember that. So they know they can help some friends out in a band that they enjoy, so they asked us to do it, and we’re like, “Are you kidding me? Of course.” It’s No Fear sponsored, so it’s pushed real hard. It’s Killswitch, which is one of the biggest bands out there. Every show is just humongous, and it’s real good for us. Most of the time, when we headline it’s like preaching to the converted, you know what I mean? People already know us, and we want to get out there with new fans, maybe cross over to the radio fans over here that might not know heavy bands like us. So they just asked us, and we’d be stupid not to do this as the first tour on our tour cycle. The record comes out two weeks into the tour. It’s a perfect setup for us. So far, we just lucked out. It’s just awesome.

Very diverse. That’s what I like, too.

I do. I think it’s great because if I’m going to a show, even if it’s four bands that I love, if they all sound similar, I get bored. So this is cool, more of an eclectic theme. That’s what I like about going to Europe sometimes is the festivals over there eclectic like this. You can have Red Hot Chili Peppers on the main stage and then you can have us playing with Anthrax on another stage, but those fans will watch both bands. So hopefully, things like this will happen more often, so you don’t just sit back and go, “Ugh, another metal band.” I think these kids appreciate that, too.

We’re gonna push this one strong. We’re gonna tour long. We’re gonna try to go a year and a half, two years on this record. As long as we can tour, all over the world. We’re trying to hit a lot of the places that we haven’t hit before, and then just try to keep playing places we have played a lot.

For the first time in our career, at the end of April we’re playing South America, which is awesome. We want to go back to Australia and Japan, which we’ve done once. But we’ve never hit New Zealand, so hopefully we’ll hit that on this tour. We want to go more Eastern Europe, maybe even into Russia. So we’ll just see. We’re trying to book all that right now.

Experiencing different cultures, meeting different people and just being in a different city every day is real cool. It’s hard. Sometimes you get bummed out and want to go home, but the grass is always greener type thing where you just want to get back on the road when you’re home for, like, a week. So I love the traveling aspect of it. But if I had to pick one thing, it would have to be just playing on stage every night. That’s why I got into this, and that’s why I wanted to be in a band, just performing.

The worst part? Not showering as much as you would like to. Not being able to shit as much as you would like to in nice facilities. You can always say the typical missing your girlfriend and family, but you get used to that. If you’re with someone that’s understanding, then it’s not a big part of it. You get used to that.

We get some weirdos. We get some fanatics, like, especially when you’re in the U.K. , they will seriously—you get off the bus, like 9, 10 a.m., you haven’t even brushed your teeth yet and they’re like [outside screaming], and you’re like, “Oh my god.” I’m trying to think of the craziest thing ever. Here’s the craziest thing ever: We were in the U.K. or Germany—I think it was in the U.K. This fan comes up and we get a lot of people—this freaked me out the first couple years, but now it’s, like, normal—but we get a lot of people that get Chimaira tattoos. This dude—I kid you not—lifted up his shirt, and he was like, “Mark, check it out.” It’s a portrait of Mark tattooed on him with Mark’s signature underneath. Mark was freaked out. He took a picture, and, yeah, I don’t get it. I wouldn’t—no, you know? I wouldn’t do a portrait of family members, you know? That’s kind of creepy. That picture’s floating around somewhere online. I’m sure you could see it.

I think the highlight’s right now. We couldn’t be more excited. Everyone’s getting along better than they ever have. We couldn’t be more excited for the CD to come out. We’re on two labels that are pushing the hell out of us. This is almost like the excitement you get, I’d say, when you first start a band, you put out your first CD or get signed. It’s real cool. Being on this tour tops it off.