This piece sorta just happened out of the blue, inspired by
a story I read yesterday online wherein Dez Farfara, vocalist of the generally meh
DevilDriver and formerly of the generally rad Coal Chamber, has publicly
stated, again, that Coal Chamber is forever broken up, and is not coming back.
Apparently, the greater purpose of this interview was to announce that
DevilDriver is going to start playing Coal Chamber songs live, which is sort of
an interesting possibility, and that this was preceded by another round of Dez
calling the old band members and everyone swearing at each other. I kinda just
wanted to take a few minutes and talk about this. Part thinkpiece, part album
review, part discography dive, it’s hard to really say where this fits, but
here it is regardless.
Coal Chamber was such an important band in my life from 1999
to probably 2003, something that I got endless flak from some dudes I used to hang
around for. They came along at the end of the Nu-metal era, played music that
was closer to bands like Slipknot than Korn or the rap metal bands, and had a
totally laughable, explosion inside a Hot Topic look. If early 2000’s Ozzfest
birthed a band directly from its forehead, that band would have been Coal
Chamber. They wrote simple songs that were more cathartic blasts of the
tumultuous emotions of being a late teen/early twentysomething and trying to
process bad experiences from youth through the finely-honed edge of teenage
angst that was at the height of its powers even though it was supposed to be
replaced by adulthood because of your age. It was a state of being I was very
familiar with at the time, as I was trying to understand things from my youth
that I’d always known were wrong, but was “doing it wrong” because at that time
I was in my early twenties, but the best and most familiar tools I had to work
with were the ones sharpened and mastered during my rowdy and tempestuous
teenage era. Like I was supposed to be adult enough to understand and get over
it, but the only equipment I had to attempt that with were the things of an
angry teen. Always a Metal devotee, there was no shortage of aggressive and
angry music in my life, but a band like Coal Chamber checked different boxes
than Thrash bands or Death metal bands, or the Black metal bands I was just
discovering thanks to my time in Europe.
Coal Chamber was raw and imperfect, like my life was at the
time. There was a sense that Coal Chamber’s writing parts would come up with an
idea, belt it out, and then commit it to tape, maintaining freshness and
intensity that further revision or work would have dulled. There was some
emotion to it that coated my raw nerves and told me that I was right in feeling
the way I was, or thinking the things I was, or not understanding the things I
didn’t understand.
I wasn’t a real fan of a lot of the Nu-metal bands, despite
many of them being perfect for the teenage angst period of my life. They felt
targeted, like they were made for your teenage angst. Coal Chamber was
different because they didn’t FEEL targeted like that, they weren’t MADE FOR
your teenage angst: they were made FROM it. Other bands of the style felt like
they were trying to capitalize on that angst; Coal Chamber felt like they were
trying to work it out for themselves, just like you were. There was this
authenticity that still, even now, like 15 years later, seems like an enormous
weight to put on a band that basically was a flash in the pan so brief that by
the time most observed the flash, the band was gone.
But the history of the band is also one that is filled with
personal difficulties, and I always feel like Farfara is unjustly harsh when he
drags the other members’ names up as explanation as to why things fell apart.
One of them made essentially a career change, leaving the music biz, and the
other actually suffers from some pretty severe mental illnesses, and I
personally don’t believe that those are things that should be held against a person,
even if the resulting action is that you have to go start another band. Having
played in some bands myself, I understand the frustrating nature of having to
deal with other people creatively, and I absolutely understand the difficulties
of doing so with people who are difficult to work with, or people who try to
make everything about them, like Farfara usually does, and I understand the
territoriality of artists, which is something that artists themselves often
attempt to claim doesn’t exist.
But the band. Despite their cathartic appeal, Coal Chamber
suffered from “A CD Holds 80 Minutes” syndrome, that condition that was so
terribly prevalent in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, where a band would have
some really good material on an album that was usually rounded out with some
stuff that should have been left behind. Records had true A and B sides, where
the good stuff would be front loaded and the rest would take up space at the
end, generally enough to push track listings into the double digits when it may
have been better to cut it after song nine or ten. The self-titled album
certainly does this, with the first six songs being pretty great, including
singles “Loco,” “Big Truck,” and “Sway,” while everything post-“Sway” is kind
of one song with brief one or two second breaks between movements. Largely
forgettable, yet all unified in that cathartic morass of “working something
out”. It should probably be noted that the self-titled album is 14 tracks: the
three terrific singles, three other good songs, an eight and a half minute
track of which most is filler silence before a hidden track pops up, and two 45
second interlude-type throwaways. So, 12
actual tracks, half of which are good and the other half are forgettable. But
by the point in the album where the filler comes along, the general aura of the
album has been established, and the other songs pass by without much reason to
turn them off or pay them attention, as a kind of white noise. The general
listening experience for the album consisted of those first six songs setting
the tone and providing the desired context, whatever it was on that occasion,
and then the back half playing while the listener was so absorbed in the
experience that they barely noticed the rest of the record.
Follow up record Chamber
Music deals with the same issue, but to a much lesser extent. Chamber Music has its lows as well, but
the highs are so much higher and the overall album is so much more successful
that the forgotten tracks don’t feel as tacked on. Chamber Music is 16 tracks, including an intro, a rerecording of a
song that appeared on a movie soundtrack, and the cover of “Shock the Monkey”
which had gotten them some mainstream attention at the time. This record has a
much more polished sound, and tends towards better songwriting as well. It is a
slick, polished angst, which felt better, then and now, than the self-titled’s
rough edges, a more enjoyable drug for your angst than the more abrasive high
of the first album. And it seemed with Chamber
Music that Coal Chamber was on to it, getting attention and touring and all
was well.
And then there was Dark
Days. The third Coal Chamber record appeared with no impact. It did that
same thing that the other two records did: began with some good stuff before
trailing off into forgettable material. But the forgettable stuff on Dark Days is really forgettable. Opening
single “Fiend” sets a good tempo, and two of the other songs (“Watershed” and
“Something Told Me”) are decent as well, as is a cover song (again), “Rowboat”.
But after those songs, an instantly recognizable bad pattern develops. Songs
begin with a guitar riff, played once, with the rest of the band joining in at
its completion, and then the song commences. If you’ve ever played in a band of
young people who perhaps have bigger aspirations than their talent matches, you
know that process. Hey, here’s a riff, let’s jam on it; except the jam
concludes with everyone high fiving and believing themselves to have written a
song. And that is what Dark Days is,
for twelve tracks. The album never builds any momentum, and even when it was
new, was often turned off well before its halfway point. On its own, it’s a sad
final chapter in the life of the band, which once showed a lot of promise, or
at least, had gained some attention and hype, only to fizzle out in such an
uninspired fashion. Dark Days is
essentially a single with two quality b-side tracks and then a bunch of crap,
or a single and a good b-side, then a second decent single with a cover song
b-side. It’s the one Coal Chamber record that feels like it takes effort to get
through, lacking that cathartic quality and seeming like it is much, much
longer than its runtime. The repetition of that playing a riff through and then
the band joining in pattern, the amateurish quality of the majority of the
songs, the overall dull nature of the material all add up to a completely
skippable album, and such a limp finish.
After a years-long lull the band came back with the
strikingly confident and competent Rivals, a good record, but not one that
left any lasting impressions here. For me, it was one of those albums that made
me want to listed to other Coal Chamber albums instead, the old, comfy ones
that made me feel better 18 or 20 years ago. It was better than Dark Days, and remains on my list of
“Listen To This Again” albums, but is continuously pushed down that list by
other overlooked records. It was apparently a one-off deal, without any plans
to follow it even based on whatever success or reception it may have earned. If
it wasn’t a quality chunk of music, we’d all call it a contract filler and
brush it aside. A shame, really. “I.O.U Nothing” and one other song, “Bridges
You Burn,” I think, are the memorable pieces, and again, the rest is perfectly
capable, if not long lasting. And then, once again, the band was gone.
In truth, it seems that that is what Farfara’s problem with
his former bandmates is. In a recent interview, the one where he boasted about
playing some Coal Chamber songs in the future with DevilDriver, Farfara rattles
off this list of phrases that to some extent speak highly of the other Coal
Chamber members, in something of a passive aggressive fashion. The usual lines
about camaraderie and fellowship and working together and partying mingle in
with a line about Coal Chamber being the only band Farfara got a Gold record
with, that for the debut self-titled effort. DevilDriver is five or six albums
into its career, and he’s never attained the same degree of validation. None of
the other Coal Chamber albums reached that point either. Here he is, a guy who
had success and, if you believe his tales of the beginnings of Coal Chamber, a
real vision and intent as to where he wanted his music to go, met with Gold on
his first real try, only to middle along afterwards, perhaps his greatest work
(Chamber Music) not getting the due
it truly deserves, and his current project working about as hard as anyone else
in the scene and never looking like they’re going to break out of that second
underbilling position, playing after the local opening act and before whatever
up and comer the label tossed out there to be direct support for the headliner.
There was a time, long, long ago now, that that positon was occupied by Lamb of
God, and look what they turned it into.
But the problem here is an ironic one, that being that
Farfara’s grudges against or bullying of or attacks on former bandmates,
whatever we want to call such actions, fly directly in the face of the thing
that made Coal Chamber such a treasured band in my own life, and probably in
the lives of many others. And that is that those people are wrong for feeling
the ways that they do, even if they don’t know why they feel those ways. Is the
right thing to do really to talk shit about Mike Cox because he realized he
didn’t want to be a rock star, and instead got a job he liked? Is there really
any excuse to make so many sideways references to Meegs Rascon and whatever
mental health issues he struggles with? Notice Farfara never has cross words
for Rayna Foss, who married the drummer from Sevendust (I think) who once
threatened to kick Farfara’s ass for something I don’t recall, or whoever it
was who replaced Foss when she left the band. The answer to all of the things
phrased as questions is obviously no. A band I played with for a long time had
a Farfara, the guy who thought everything revolved around him and for a time
insisted that myself and our drummer carry and set up his gear for him. All it
took was one time leaving that shit outside a venue in the snow was all it took
to convince him that we were not going to do that. Why don’t Meegs and Mike
ever give interviews and tell Dez to go pound sand? Probably because they are
past it, and he’s still trying to live that rock and roll life. Maybe Farfara
misses them, and Coal Chamber, but is just a real jerk when it comes to trying
to express that. Doesn’t make anything better or excuse anything, but it could
be true, I suppose. It tragically paints Dez Farfara with a similar brush as
Phil Anselmo: still doing his thing, to moderate levels of success and acclaim,
but still looking at the past with a pretty adversarial eye towards the people
that helped him get to where he is now, with the accusation that it’s not good
enough. Without the racism, at least, as far as we know.
A lot of heavy metal music appeals to me for different
reasons, and that has always been the case. When I was younger and was
exploring the genre, I found different things I appreciated about different
styles or bands. This band was exciting; this genre was chaotic and challenging
to listen to; this band had lyrical content I liked; this band gave me that
tough metal guy feeling, the “me against the world” veneer; this band said what
I thought about life or politics or whatever. Coal Chamber didn’t do those
things: Coal Chamber made me feel that what I was feeling was ok, that my
response to it was ok, that it was ok to just feel angry and not really know
why. They occupy this really golden place in my memories of a really tumultuous
time in my life, and I find it super disappointing whenever Farfara pops up to deliver
this kind of interview.
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