Live-Metal.Net - Interviews: Devildriver

With its 2007 effort, The Last Kind Words, DevilDriver has continued to carve out its niche in the metal world. The disc effectively builds on the band’s sophomore release, The Fury of Our Maker’s Hand (2005), by upping the ante with more intricate and skilled guitar work yet sacrificing none of the relentlessly heavy attack. On stage, the band, led by frontman Dez Fafara, is nothing short of ferocious, consistently stealing the show as a support act and giving fans a full dose of DevilDriver on its second U.S. headlining tour. Support on the run comes from the legendary Napalm Death, as well as 36 Crazyfists, Invitro and Straight Line Stitch. When the tour stopped at Jaxx in Springfield, Va., guitarist Jeff Kendrick sat down with Live-Metal.net’s Greg Maki for a pre-show interview.

Jeff Kendrick: Yeah, probably at about the halfway point.

Really well, man. The shows have been really good. The turnouts have been good and we’re having a good time. So can’t complain.

Looking at the list of bands, it’s a really diverse group of bands. Did you do that intentionally?

Yeah. The last headlining tour we did, like two years ago, was the same thing, kind of. It worked really well, so it’s kind of good to have a diverse package because if you’re gonna have five bands, you don’t want everyone to be the same. Then it just kind of gets old.

What’s it like being out with a band that’s been around for so long, like Napalm Death?

It’s crazy. They’re opening for us, but it just kind of shows things go in cycles, you never know where you’re gonna be at. They’re really cool guys. They’re awesome. It’s definitely an honor to have them out here.

Yeah. It’s sold out tonight already. Can’t complain about that.

Yeah, for like two weeks.

No. It’s gonna be great. I’m really excited.

Yeah, we’re real lucky.

I don’t know. Our following in Australia is pretty good now. I don’t know. It’s probably pretty even everywhere. It’s not huge, but we’re pretty solid everywhere. So it’s not like one market where we’re really lacking or one market where we’re really outstanding.

Europe, Australia and South America have been cool. Probably Australia is the best, coolest place. Hopefully we’ll get to Japan or China or something soon. I’m looking forward to that.

The tour I really wanted to see but it didn’t really come close to me was when you were with Killswitch Engage and Lamb of God. How did that go?

It was really good, man. It was really fun. It was cool to be part of a tour like that. We had a blast and we know those bands really well.

Yeah. Three, four times. It was definitely cool.

When you’re out here on the road, aside from playing shows and talking to people like me, what kind of stuff do you like to do?

I try and go to the gym occasionally and I’ll take a nap in the middle of the day. Read. I don’t really party as much as I used to. Kind of keep it productive.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. Totally hang out.

You’ve done Ozzfest a couple times, including last year. Did you notice any difference last year with the whole free thing?

Yeah, I didn’t like it as much. Well, the thing I didn’t like about Ozzfest last year as much was the stage. But I still think it’s run well. But the stage was kind of like not as good as when we did it the year before. I don’t know. I haven’t heard anything about it this year. I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know.

Yeah. Oh yeah, for sure.

Well, the new album, The Last Kind Words, the guitars really kind of jump out at me on that, more solos than before and more technical, maybe. Is it that something you guys decided on ahead of time or did it just come out as you wrote?

Kind of both. We definitely wanted to step it up ‘cause we all like guitar solos and stuff like that. We never really had that many before. So we just decided let’s try and do this. We didn’t consciously try and do it in every single song. We just wanted to make it work. Some people write music in a certain way where you have to have this here and that really doesn’t work, in my opinion. It’s kind of what works for the song.

We’d just write all the songs and [guitarist] Mike [Spreitzer] has a little studio in his house. So we’d go over to his house and just demo all of it. And we can program the drums and all that. Then kind of put it together like that and then, once we’d gone through it enough, we’d decide what’s gonna work and what’s not.

Yeah. And then sometimes we’d come in and be like, “Alright, let’s just see what we can throw together.” But it usually works better when everyone puts ideas together for that whole process.

And then, I guess, after that is when Dez comes in with the lyrics. Do the rest of you guys give him ideas and suggestions?

Yeah, I mean, it kinda works both ways. He might be like, “Oh, I wrote a chorus for this part,” like for the music and so we end up switching it. Or we might suggest, “Why don’t you try this.” So it’s like kind of subtle help here and there. But everyone’s got their respective duties.

You worked with Jason Suecof as the producer. He seems to be one of the hot producers in the genre now. What was that like and what did he bring to the album?

He’s a really talented guy, probably one of the most talented musicians I’ve ever seen. And he’s crazy. In a good way, which is really fun. It was awesome. Between him and his engineer [Mark Lewis], it was really, really cool. He helped out with everything. A lot of his ideas were really good.

Yeah, he’s ridiculous.

Oh yeah. It’s ridiculous how good of a guitarist he is. I mean, it’s just not even funny.

I really like the album cover and the booklet, for this new album especially. How important do you see that to the overall package?

Yeah, it’s pretty important. You don’t want it to be cheesy, like overboard. But you don’t want it to be kind of just plain and whatever. The music’s gonna speak for itself, but I always look at album covers of new records and sometimes I’m like, “What is this?” In the end, it doesn’t matter if the band’s good, but it’s kind of cool if the music’s good and the presentation of the band is good.

Sometimes—it doesn’t really happen too much anymore because there’s not as many stores left—but sometimes you would go into a store and see an album cover, it looked cool and you would end up getting it.

Exactly. So it can work like that easily.

I saw that the album, at least in its first week, sold more than the last album, which for an established band these days is kind of rare, I think.

It’s awesome. It’s totally good. Whether that’s gonna happen the next time, who knows because of the way CD sales are. But we were happy. We’re happy with everything, how it’s going.

Do you know if there any plans to do a special edition like for the last album?

I don’t know. It hasn’t been talked about yet. At least, I don’t think. So we’ll see.

Yeah, we’re working on that right now.

Yeah, it’s gonna be a live show and a bunch of stuff we’ve shot the past few years. It’s gonna be great. It should be pretty long, hopefully.

In the fall, probably. In between when we come off for the record and then release the next one.

Yeah, we have some ideas, demoed some stuff. We’ve already started working on it. We’re gonna have some time off after this tour and the Europe tour, so we’ll really write a lot then.

Yeah. Yeah, it’s too early. It’ll be DevilDriver. It won’t be super experimental or anything. It’ll be what we do.

Do you think now, three albums into the band’s career, you’ve sort of figured out and established the DevilDriver sound?

Yeah. I think there’ll be little things here and there that are maybe different, but it’s always gonna be rooted. We’re never gonna hit super hard from left field. There’s more experimentation on this record as far as the music. Some of the songs, there’s more clean guitars and stuff like that. So it will follow suit in that direction.

I don’t know if I have any more questions for you. Do you have anything you want to add?

Thanks for all your support, all the fans and journalists and anything alike. Appreciate it.