Formed in the early 90s, Coal Chamber was a band that played urgent and aggressive music
draped in heavy stage makeup, piercings, and black fetish clothing. As an up-and-coming nu-metal act,
the band showed that simplicity and heaviness went hand in hand, and dominated the scene with a
darker, more evil approach compared to what other bands were doing. Releasing 4 albums in total
(one being gold and the others damn well close), they proved to not be a one hit wonder. When
asked what their band name represents in an interview with Lollipop Magazine,
guitarist Miguel Rascon stated, “It’s a cold, dark place. It fits the imagery of our music.
Potential energy. Heavy. Under great pressure…” Judging by their appearance, you’d expect a pretty
dark, brooding band, but Coal Chamber’s music actually emitted nuances of hope and optimism
while also promoting individuality. By the time their third album was released, there
was speculation that they’d never perform together again, although they’d reunite for their fourth
and final album in 2015. Today, let’s explore whatever happened to the band Coal Chamber.
Coal Chamber frontman Dez Fafara was born in Santa Barbara, California
and raised in Los Angeles. He grew up as an outcast telling the LA Times “I was that kid that
gets thrown in the trash can at lunch,”. “But I came out on top.” He would draw inspiration
from a range of artists including The Cure and Motley Crue. Fafara recalled to the LA Times,
“I had Nikki [Sixx] all over my walls! I remember my mom tweaking out and taking the posters down.
I just liked the whole look of that band and the heaviness of it”.
In 1992, ahead of Coal Chamber’s inception, Fafara and guitarist Miguel Rascón,
better known as Meegs, formed the band She’s In Pain, who was influenced by gothic rock, and would
help shape part of the band’s sound early on. Within the next several years, the roots of Coal
Chamber would be solidified once the members found each other through the newspaper The Recycler.
Meegs would recall to scheter guitars (Sheckter), "I think we all hated each other from the start
when we found each other in Recycler." "But it was the music that kept us together."
When we hear about the evolution of popular music, there appears to be this period in the 80s and
early 90s when heavy metal music was popular and then alternative rock took over for several years,
but against the backdrop of this transition was a burgeoning scene in Los Angeles
where the two genres cross pollinated with hip hop, which initiated the birth of nu-metal.
Dez Fafara would tell Metal Hammer about coming up amidst this transition, saying,
“The scene was relatively dead,” “We were coming out after the hair metal thing was done and killed
off. But there was a sense that something new was forming among the bands at that time.”
"Up in LA there were the Deftones, Coal Chamber and later on, System of a Down.
I’m the one who found Static-X when they were playing in front of fifteen people. We would
all go to shows every single night and play with each other and create this new scene together.”
Dez would go on to say, “Clubs started to pack out again.
One by one, we all got signed. We were there the night Deftones got signed — a limo rolled up and
Madonna rolled through! We were like ‘Holy shit, this thing’s on fire!’ The next one to get signed
might have been Korn, then us and then System.” While emerging bands from the area would soon
be slapped with the nu-metal tag, they each had their own set of influences. But like
the scenes before it, nu-metal suffered the same fate – a few bands in the scene got huge,
record labels went on a signing frenzy, and the public’s taste moved with the times. Eventually,
even the term nu-metal became resented by the bands it was meant to describe. Dez would tell
Loudersound, “The same thing kind of happened with nu-metal. My guitar player (Meegs Rascón) said it
best: ‘nu metal’ was a great term until the second wave of bands came in and we all got
put into that ‘nu-metal thing’. At that point, even among us, it became a dirty word. Right now,
they call Devildriver ‘groove metal,’ and there aren’t many other bands that get called that.”
Coal Chamber would come together in mid-1994 playing gigs in Los Angeles and nearby Orange
County. By 1995, they recorded some demos, and caught the attention of producer Ross Robinson
and Fear Factory’s Dino Cazares (Deeno Cazarees) who connected the group with
metal label Roadrunner Records. The band went on to become part of a new Hollywood uprising,
taking over the Sunset Strip alongside bands like Korn, SpineShank, Fear Factory and Snot.
Side note guys i’ve done a vieo on Snot’s career, the link is down below.
Following Coal Chamber’s signing to Roadrunner Records, Fafara temporarily left the group to
spend more time with his wife. But half a year later, he rejoined Coal Chamber and his marriage
ended in divorce. He reflected on his decision, telling Lollipop Magazine, “I strongly recommend
against giving up what’s most important to you to please someone else in your life,
and if you do, don’t descend into drugs and alcohol so deep that no one can pull you back out.
A knock came on the door from Miguel, and that probably saved my life.”
Toward the end of 1995, the band were able to continue their deal with the label,
and things were starting to look up. Once Sharon Osbourne, the wife of rock icon Ozzy Osbourne,
stepped up as their manager, Coal Chamber took part in the very first Ozzfest in 1996,
which raised their profile considerably. By February of 1997, Coal Chamber released their
self-titled debut album on Roadrunner, introducing touches of the hip-hop and metal sound that was
making the rounds in the scene. The album would go gold moving over a half a million copies.
Dez would talk to Maximum Ink about how the band defined their music, saying, “We call ourselves
‘spooky core.’ I guess that’s because there are so many downtuned bands from L.A…and we had to come
up with something to differentiate ourselves from those bands, so we came up with “spooky core.” and
giving the band their biggest hit in Loco. On their sophomore album, Chamber Music,
released in September of 1999, Coal Chamber veered away from the rap element of their sound,
and opted for a more open-ended, melodic direction with Dez telling the LA Times “Just be yourself.
People who feel life through the way they look are living life so much fuller than most people.
They’re not afraid to show what’s on the inside through the outside. I always trust someone who’s
tattooed and pierced over some guy in a suit.” Fafara would continue to be mindful of the
change in the band’s approach, telling the newspaper the following year, “Kids want to
talk about things and kids want to party,” he says. “Those two entities exist within them.
It’s up to you to bring it out in them. You can hand them a beer or you can hand them a
thought.” “I heard one singer on MTV say, ‘I don’t have any responsibility. Since when has
rock been responsible?’ And I just thought, ‘When has it not?’ But I think people take it different
ways. I feel I have a responsibility. If I’m going to touch 500,000 people, I might as well
give them something other than 'f you.’ ” That’s not to say that the band abstained
from the typical rock n’ roll excess. “All the drugs, the alcohol, the sex—all
that exists on tour.” “I tend to sit in the back of the bus with candles, just writing.
I stay away from all those things now because I sunk myself into them for the
past two years, and I’ve done it all.” Fafara’s journey to live a more simple
life would come at a heavy price as apart from getting divorced, his brother would die from
AIDS and Coal Chamber’s bus driver would pass away due to a heart attack. He would tell the
LA Times “I think everything that happened has made me see life as life,” “It can be taken
away from you, and every minute is precious.” Fafara would also acknowledge that kids by the
late 90’s faced a lot more difficulties than himself or the members during their childhood.
This was often referenced in nu-metal music, which included anecdotes of violence at school
and places of worship. Honestly, if you look at what’s going on in the world right now,
people are growing accustomed to cutting off close friendships and relationships
just because of differing opinions, but Fafara’s words of wisdom still resonate:
“Everybody is bummed and angry. But I try to give them something else lyrically,
to base their life around, other than just pure hate. We all grow up, we all learn
to hate. You look into a child’s eyes and you want to instill something positive--something
that can get them through that.” The band would get into a legal
battle with Insane Clown Posse who dropped the band from their tour in the late 90’s.
This would result in manager Sharon Osbourne confronting the ICP on Howard Stern’s radio show.
I’ve done a whole video on the feud and the link is down below. By early 2000 Osbourne would step
down as the group’s manager.Coal Chamber would sign with another company named Left Bank, which
represented the likes of Motley Crue and Blondie. By the time they recorded their third album,
Dark Days, in 2001, Coal Chamber still had yet to reach the audience that their peers including
Korn and the Deftones had. Fafara would tell MTV about the band’s thoughts going into the album,
saying, "We wanted to take a chance." "Rock and roll is a little bit watered down right now. We
wanted to take a chance and do something really raw, even with the artwork and everything. We
were going to do no liner notes, black cover, black everything." "I don't think we went back;
we went forward." "We thought, 'If this is going on now, what's going on next?'
We wanted to make an album that we can play live. And we can do this whole record live."
The band’s choice in producer was also a gamble, as they enlisted Ross Hograth,
whose clientele included everyone from REM to Jewel to John Mellencamp.
Considering all that the band had gone through up until this point,
the themes on this album would hit close to home. In particular, the penultimate track on the album,
“Empty Jar,” Fafara would reveal to MTV what the song was about saying
"We came home, and our finances had not been taken care of by anyone," "When you're hungry
and you're missing a million dollars, you have to write about it. Mine is the empty jar. What
you see isn't always what you believe. People see me pull up in a Towncar because the record label
just drove me to an interview, and they don't understand the struggle musicians usually have.
Somewhere down the line, we weren't thinking about the business. We are now."
Dark Days would be released in May of 2002, and during the tour to support the album,
internal tensions would rise. Fafara and Rascon came to blows on stage during their Jagermeister
Tour stop in Lubbock, Texas. Four songs into their set, Rascon hit Fafara on the head with
his guitar, resulting in the frontman walking off the stage and telling the crowd, and I quote,
“This is the last Coal Chamber show ever." The band tried to keep playing, but drummer
Mike Cox destroyed his kit, ending the concert. Coal Chamber also failed to show up for their
next stop in Oklahoma City, which led fans to speculate the authenticity of his statement.
Even though a spokesperson for the band at the time claimed that the band wasn’t breaking up
and still had planned shows, the band would call it quits in 2003, while Fafara went
on to form DevilDriver the following year. Then, in 2011, despite an earlier statement
by Farfara that Coal Chamber’s breakup would be permanent, the band reunited. Meegs would tell
scheter guitars how it happened recalling "Well, after many years of being broken apart, Dez called
me to get the band back together. It took years after that to really jell and form a bond together
again. [A lot] of hard work and soul searching. It just felt right after many years to make music and
tour again. Fully organic in that sense. Wasn't about money for me. It was about doing it right."
Coal Chamber would reform just in time for the Soundwave Festival in Australia, and Dez recalled
to Loudersound how it led to new music saying, “We go to Soundwave and come out in front of 60,000
people and you hear everybody singing Loco. I was shocked. At first, I thought, 'OK, this reunion’s
going to happen because a), I never want to live with regret; and b) when you hear 60,000 people
singing Loco, you think, What the fuck?'" Following several more high-profile festival
performances in the next few years, the band signed a new recording deal with Napalm Records.
In late 2014, they began work on their comeback album, Rivals, enlisting the help of Mark Lewis,
who previously worked with Fafara’s current band DevilDriver as producer and engineer. Rivals would
be released in May of 2015, and much like Dark Days, it would peak at number one in various
countries, this time France and Germany, while also placing highly on the Top Heatseekers chart,
but by the same token, tensions would overtake the band, and once again, facilitate their breakup.
Dez would tell Blunt Magazine in 2016, “We had a massive draw, we were a massive
presence all over radio. It's just that inward, all the members had problems that I
didn't want to deal with any more, so I left.” By 2020, during an interview with Loudersound,
Dez revealed and I quote ‘I’m not gonna say no to a new Coal Chamber album’ while going on to
explain the relationship with the members of his former outfit was good but they were busy
with other projects. Today, Farfara prioritizes DevilDriver while also running a surf business,
as well as a new management agency he’s formed with wife to find and develop new bands.
That does it for today’s video, guys; thanks for watching. Be sure to hit the like button
and subscribe, and I’ll see you again on Rock N’ Roll True Stories. Take care.