Interviews

 

CHIMAIRA

 

Words: Rod Yates

 

“I’m sorry, I’m trying to do this interview and my dog keeps sticking her tongue in my mouth!” Chimaira vocalist Mark Hunter lets out a good-natured chuckle, and the sound of him gently extricating himself from his dog’s grasp filters down the phoneline from his Cleveland home. Though it’s five o’clock in the afternoon – a public holiday in America, no less – and Hunter is only starting to see the end of a day’s worth of promotional interviews, the vocalist remains in astoundingly good humour. But then, given the past couple of years Chimaira have had, being stuck to a phone while dodging the advances of an amorous canine probably isn’t that big a deal.

 

Most fans of the Ohio sextet will already know that they split with their label Roadrunner last year, severing a contract which to that point had produced three well-received albums. What most fans may not realise, though, is just how close Chimaira came to calling it a day.

 

“We weren’t seeing eye to eye with Roadrunner and the way we were being promoted, and it started making us miserable,” starts Hunter. “And we weren’t getting along with Kevin Talley who had replaced our drummer Andels [Herrick] back in 2004. Whether he knew it or not he was segregating the band. You know, if Rob [Arnold, guitar] was friends with Kevin, then Chris [Spicuzza, keys] and I didn’t want to hang out with Rob. And Jim [LaMarca, bass] wanted to go out with Rob and we’d be like, ‘Why are you siding up with Rob? He likes Kevin!’ It got really immature and juvenile. But what else are six guys trapped in a box who drink and play video games going to do? Start petty bullshit, I guess. So that’s exactly what we did. But it got ugly. I got in a fist-fight with Jim on the bus, it got that bad.”

 

Not helping was the fact that the band had started to use booze as a crutch through which to escape the inner turmoil.

 

“It turned into the Motley Crue bus, but not the Motley Crue bus that liked to go out and have fun because you’re in a rock’n’roll band, it was more to escape reality,” sighs Hunter. “The other crazy thing was when I was in Europe I would take some sleeping pills just to wake up two hours before we’d perform and play, and then go take a sleeping pill and go right back to bed. I just did not want to be doing it. Chris and I both wanted to leave and start something different.”

 

In a moment of clarity, Hunter stopped and realised that, as leader of the band, everyone was looking to him for guidance, and that if Chimaira were to survive, he would have to start turning things around. News that drummer Herrick wanted to return started the ball turning, at which point Hunter also sat down with Roadrunner and asked that the band be released from their contract. The final step before they could move on was to attend to the personal wounds caused by the months of in-fighting.

 

“It was just time to get it all out in the open and stop all the bullshit and regroup as friends,” says Hunter. “So we did that, and it was like, okay, now we’ve got two months off, everyone go home, relax, be with your families and girlfriends and then let’s throw down.”

 

From the title of their new album, Resurrection, to the seething brutality of every track on offer, everything about album number four screams that this is the work of a band reborn.

 

“The goal was like, ‘Okay, fuck everything. Remember when we first started and we would write heavy shit and want to break stuff in the practice space? That’s the headspace we need to be in.’ We had no label coming in and listening to our songs and giving their opinion, it was just the six of us at our own pace enjoying it. There were creative differences,” adds Hunter, “but it wasn’t like, ‘Why don’t you take that guitar and shove it up your fucking asshole, I’m leaving!’”

 

Though the lack of label interference was obviously a blessing, it must nevertheless have been slightly unnerving to be working on an album but not knowing who was going to release it and when.

 

“Not really,” says Hunter. “As soon as we got off Roadrunner we knew we were going to sign with Ferret [in America] and Nuclear Blast [for the rest of the world]. They had both come to see us in that grey area where we had talked to Roadrunner but it wasn’t official yet, so we knew we weren’t going to have any trouble getting picked up. So the whole time we were writing and recording our managers and lawyers were just finalising the deals. So that was another way we knew we didn’t have any pressure, cos we just knew everything was fine.”

 

With the band now the major priority at their new labels, Hunter feels that the sky might just be the limit for this band that only months ago was staring straight at the gutter.

 

“I’m not one of those dudes out there going, ‘We are the next Metallica!’, I just hate seeing that kind of shit. But I just feel like now we have a chance, and we’re excited. On Roadrunner we were the little fish in a big pond, and now it’s the opposite, we’re the biggest band Ferret have ever signed. Our backs were against the wall for a long time and we’ve been underdogs, and people who have discovered us stuck by us and it’s awesome. Now it’s just time to build that up a bit more.”

 

 

 

[BACK TO INTERVIEWS]