DEVILDRIVER

Jeff Kendrick on new album Last Kind Words

Photo by Matt Hamm

There's something you can't help but smile about when going to a converted church to meet a band called DevilDriver. While the name evokes images of the less credible Black Metal act, devil drivers were originally intended to drive evil away - it's just the racket they make that sounds like hell itself ripping its way out from the earth.

It's here we find the band on the penultimate date of a massive UK tour, supporting their third album The Last Kind Words, an incendiary album which has – with good reason – received more than its fair share of kind words. Over their previous (and also impressive) albums, they've drawn from groove and death metal influences to create a terrifying sound of their own, resulting in a third album with that rare distinction of not a single dud track. Having recently finished a last-minute placement on this year's Ozzfest before this tour, the band are exhausted, and with frontman Dez Fafara found inside the venue warming up with some kickboxing, Phill May gets some time in their cramped but comfortable tour bus with bleary-eyed guitarist Jeff Kendrick...

It's just under four years since you released your début, in which time you've released three good albums. How have you managed to get them out in a relatively short space of time?

"Well, we're just constantly writing. Everyone in the band plays guitar and writes, except for Dez, so there's four people writing for a record, so it's always gonna be different and nothings gonna sound the same. We don't wait until we're done with an album cycle to start writing, we will find periods of time when we've got a break away from touring and then start writing. So it's a constant process. It's like continually working out all the time; you don't stop, you just keep doing it. You might tone it down or tone it up, but you're always doing it."

'The Last Kind Words' has been out since June. How do you feel about how it's gone down?

"I think it's going great, I think everything's going fantastic. The response has been great; I think it's a really great record. I'm really proud of it.

"I think 'Not All Who Wander Are Lost', 'Clouds Over California' and 'These Fighting Words' really are the best ones. Overall, I like how the music and the lyrics really gel. I think the songs are really well written, the lyrical content and phrasing is great."

How do you think the reception to the album has been? Has it gone as well as you'd hoped?

"I think it's actually gone better. I knew people would really like it because we're proud of it. We got nine out of ten on Blabbermouth, which is a very critical website, so i didn't expect that. So it's things like that that exceed my expectations [even] when I knew that people would like it."

How do would you compare The Last Kind Words compares to the previous albums?

"I think it's better. I mean, for one I think it's the best production we've got and everyone's really happy with the overall tones for everything. And I think it's more mature and, well, a better piece of art."

Which songs are going down well live?

"I think it's 'Clouds Over California' and 'Not All Who Wander Are Lost' that are the best received, but we're playing 'Head On To Heart Ache' and 'The Axe Shall Fall' a lot, so I'm very happy with those too."

The album was produced by Jason Suecof [Trivium, Chimera]. What was it like to work with him?

"Fantastic! We became really good friends, and he's one of the most talented musicians I've ever been in the presence of, he's just unbelievable.

"He's a little bit erratic, but he keeps things fun, and he's just that kind of person that [where] you hit a brick wall he will never be stopped, he will always have an idea to get past that part. He's just an exceptional musician, really amazing ear – we'll be playing guitar and writing guitar solos and he'll be like, "Why don't you just do the same thing just two frets down?" you know? Not even picking the guitar up and figuring it out, just looking at it and knowing what it's supposed to sound like and just suggesting it. Just incredible."

You say that all of you apart from Dez play guitar. How does that feed into the process of creating songs? Does it mean there's more emphasis on guitars or make it easier because you have all these different heads with good ideas?

"It's not necessarily easier, but there's far more material and everybody has different styles. It can get hard sometimes – when people have different ideas and you try and put stuff together – but it's what makes it fun, it's the challenge of that."

DevilDriver - 'Not All Who Wander Are Lost'

You end up with a hell of a lot of riffs then?

[laughs] "Yeah, absolutely."

You were just at the Ozzfest again, you're pretty much regulars these days. How did it go this year?

"It's great, we only got added last minute because a band cancelled – which I think is continuing with the luck of our band, we've had very good luck – and it was great man, we got to headline the second stage with Behemoth and Hatebreed, and" [laughs] " again, it went great, so like everything else it's going really well. We're very blessed."

Over here, you played a great set at Download this year, with a much talked about circle pit. How was it for you and what's the story with this monster circle-pit?

"Honestly, the festival's about as professional as anything I've ever been a part of. It's amazing. We've done it three times now – we did it twice in 2006 because Soilwork cancelled, and then once this year. And, uh, the circle pit? It's something that just happened, and it just continually got better and better and better as the band has been playing in front of bigger and bigger audiences – whether headlining or supporting – and that was the biggest crowd we'd played in front of as DevilDriver so it was like let's just try and take what we do in a club and put it on that larger scale."

You only have a couple more shows left on this tour, how's the tour been going?

"Amazing. Great venues, great turnouts, it's been a lot of fun. We've been here for a month, working hard, but doing well." [Despite the amount of times, he's said 'great', the pride on the man's tired face says it all –PM]

Are there any plans yet for a new release?

"Well, like I said, a few of us have some ideas, but in the next two months or so we'll have a month off, so we'll start writing, cause that's just how we do it, jump on it. You know, I went to college for a few years, and you know when you write a paper you write multiple drafts? You don't do it all in one day; you do it over time, so we sort of take that approach."

With that, we leave the tour bus and he shuffles off. A decent but clearly very, very tired man, he is far from the rockstar many would imagine him, and a world away from the figure he cuts onstage. With there being only one more date to the tour you wonder how much energy the band can have left. But then a few hours later it's a different matter altogether, as he dashes from one side of the stage to the other, whipping up such a tempest with the rest of the band that weathermen may need to consider giving it a name like any other hurricane.

For our review of that night's show, head to the LIVE pages.

by Phill May

Further links

Roadrunner Records UK

Online home of Machinehead, Soulfly, and more...

DevilDriver on Myspace

Devastating metallic racket from ex-Coal Chamber vocalist