Chamberbrings 'Music' to Harpo's

By Adlin Rosli
Daily Arts Writer

Heavy music group Coal Chamber recently released it's second album entitled, "Chamber Music." The album successfully avoids the dreaded "sophomore slump" and is instead a mature progression away from the overpowering heavy music assault of the group's self titled debut.

Commenting on the album, Coal Chamber's lead singer Dez Fafara said the group was intentionally looking to give its audience a more varied offering this time around. "I wanted to take the fans through a journey instead of just taking them through the angry mind of Dez so that maybe they can feel the subtle beauty that exists in all of us. I tend to write about humanity and that leads to many different worlds to go to and many different landscapes and textures. Theres just beautiful worlds tha

ROADRUNNER RECORDS Ah, the quintessential kids next door, Coal Chamber, crash Detroit this evening.

t speak of love and endless love and theres worlds of hate," said Fafara.

To realize the group's vision of more variety in its songs, Fafara ended up straying away from the cathartic screaming of the group's first album and put a lot of effort into developing a strong singing voice for the newer songs. As he mentioned, "I knew in order to secure longevity doing this as a career I had to sing my ass off. It couldn't have just come from my heart, it had to come from other places as well so I had to learn how to do that. Me singing more overall was a total effort between all of the band members. It was a conscious effort between all of us to push each other you know?"

Although hearing Fafara sing more may already be one new thing that Coal Chamber fans will be dealing with, the group's new album actually still posesses a couple more surprises up its sleeve. Fans used to pegging the band to only its savage and heavy downtuned songs, such as "Loco" and "Sway," from its first album will no doubt be either elated or irritated by the inclusion of eerie and meloncholic ballads on "Chamber Music."

And as if that is not enough to surprise the seasoned Coal Chamber fan, there is yet one more thing about the new album that will make of break the group's relationship with its older fan base: a cover of Peter Gabriel's "Shock The Monkey." Heavy bands recording covers of popular '80s numbers seem to be the trendy thing to do these days, what with Limp Bizkit with "Faith," Orgy with "Blue Monday," Fear Factory with "Cars" and Machine Head with "Message In A Bottle."

Fafara defends his group's decision to do the cover however saying that, "Well, we've wanted to do "Shock The Monkey" for like five years now, amidst all of the pop songs around at the time it was a very "anti-pop" song. I totally stress that we did it like a Coal Chamber song, we did it so anti-pop that we don't even know if radio is going to play it. It's really heavy and its got Ozzy on it too. We shot a video for it and it's really dark and unflashy so we're not afraid of any criticism about us doing that song."

The Ozz-man himself making an appearance on the group's new album was certainly a big highlight for Fafara and his band. Fafara explained, "I think Peter Gabriel sounds a lot like Ozzy and Ozzy sound a lot like Peter. We called Ozzy and he said, "I'm a huge Peter Gabriel fan, I'd love to do it!" In fact he listens to Peter Gabriel before he goes on stage at night. So we were thinking, "Oh my God!"" The group's tie to Ozzy Osbourne does not merely end there as the group is actually managed by Osbourne's wife, Sharon Osbourne.

The group is presently out on the road supporting "Chamber Music" with Machine Head, Slipknot and Amen. Of the group's pairing with its fellow label mates from Roadrunner Records, Fafara said "This is kind of our one hand washes the other with Machine Head. They took us over to Europe and made us big. Now we want to take them out now and let people who may never have heard of Machine Head, Slipknot or Amen for that matter, and let them get a good dose."

One member of Coal Chamber will unfortunately not be out with the group for this leg of shows. As Fafara clarified, "Rayna (Foss, bass player) is pregnant and due in the next two weeks or so. We got another lady out here to fill her shoes named Nadia. We want to keep the whole boys and girls thing going on for the shows and Nadia is an awesome bass player whose getting along great with everybody."

09-10-99