COAL CHAMBER CELEBRATE GOLD AND THE RETURN OF RAYNA
Los Angeles, CA - Coal Chamber's self-titled debut album has officially reached GOLD status (sales over 500,000 copies). The follow-up to this successful effort, Chamber Music , is currrently heating up Billboard's Hard Music charts (and hot on the heels of Gold itself). The band have received critical acclaim from the likes of Alternative Press and Guitar World who called their latest work, "...Metal for the new millennium." The band have more than just a Gold record to celebrate. The coming of the year 2000 marked the return of bassist Rayna Foss-Rose to the band. Rayna took a brief hiatus from touring to have the first "Chamber Baby" with husband and drummer for Sevendust - Morgan Rose. She has been sorely missed by bandmates and fans alike. Coal Chamber will be on the road soon to support their sophomore release, Chamber Music and third radio single from that album, "Tyler's Song." The single, which was inspired by a phone call from Dez's eight-year-old son, is also featured on the upcoming soundtrack for the movie, "SCREAM 3".
Coal Chamber Contribute to Scream 3 SoundtrackCoal Chamber will be on the Scream 3 Soundtrack which will be released on Jan. 26th on Wind Up Records/BMG for more info click onto link
November 22ndFresh off their successful "Livin' La Vida Loco" tour with labelmates Slipknot, the band's gears are greased and they are sounding better than ever. Dez, Mikey, Meegs, and Nadja took a brief week off and are currently on their way to Europe for a month's worth of dates across the continent. Check the tour dates page for the full itinerary. The top 20 single "Shock the Monkey" is still in heavy rotation on America's rock radio stations and the next single will be "Tyler's Song", for which a video will be shot in the beginning of the New Year. Rayna is still in Atlanta taking care of her baby girl Kayla Moray and hopes to be back in action for Y2K and beyond. The Monster called Coal Chamber is running at full steam and with the success of 'Chamber Music', don't expect them to go away anytime soon.
Getting Fired up with Dez and Meegs
Q&A: Coal Chamber's Dez Fafara and Meegs Rascon
The Roadrunner deal was finally inked during Christmas of '95 and the band were faced with the decision of finding the right person to lay their magic down to two inch. Never afraid to take chances and try fresh ideas, that right person turned out to be two, as the band gave a shot to long time L.A. scenesters, Jay Gordon, a local musician, and Jay Baumgardner, house engineer at NRG Recording (home of Hootie, White Zombie and Green Day). These two were starving for their first big break and had as much to prove to the world as the band. By the time the NRG sessions were completed 30 days later, the band were emotionally and mentally drained, and the production duo had proven they had the goods to compete with the big boys. The album's style is that of a work in progress, tapping the veins of immediate experiences. Explains Dez, "The day I started recording my vocals, my wife left me. She left me in the driveway of my home, taking the dog and everything I fuckin' owned. Everything I fuckin' thought was real." Asking him "Are you alright?" before she took off, Dez's response, "Do I seem alright to you?," was being laid to tape in a flood of tears 10 minutes later in the studio. Those words becoming the new chorus to "Unspoiled." "Making this record was the most difficult thing any of us has ever gone through. We were challenged physically, mentally and emotionally, and it was pure hell, especially on my end. I needed to rid myself of all this emotion so that I could feel alright again. This LP is like a closure to that part of my life, and a new beginning at the same time. That was a very turbulent and chaotic period. But you know what we've since come to realize? We thrive on that. That's what drives us and gives us our edge. That's what keeps it real."
Groove heavy, with a flair for the theatrical, and the spirituality of knowing better, Coal Chamber inevitably crosses genres and styles to present a kaleidoscopic view of a world of inner conflicts put to aural form. It's a sound that is still evolving as you read this.
Coal Chamber Lines Up "Nothing" Tour [9.29.99]
10/12/99 - Rayna gave birth to a baby girl, Kayla Moray Rose, in the late evening of October 4th. Moray, the baby's middle name, is a combination of the first names of Rayna, and the baby's father, Sevendust drummer Morgan Rose. While Rayna is nuturing her daughter, Nadja Puelen will continue to fill in for her while Coal Chamber are on the road for the second leg of their US "Nothing Tour" with Slipknot, AMEN and Dope.
- New York, NY - Coal Chamber's second Roadrunner Records release, CHAMBER MUSIC was released to the ears of America on Sept.7th.
By Amy Frushour Kelly
When Coal Chamber appeared on "The Howard Stern Show" recently, it wasn't to plug the band's new album, Chamber Music. Instead, the gothic hard rockers entered the studio to confront ex-tourmates, the trash-talking hip-hop phenomenon Insane Clown Posse, over money matters and to find out why they'd been dropped from the tour. While nothing was resolved, Coal Chamber (Dez, vocals, Meegs, guitar,Rayna, bass and Mikey,drums) definitely benefited from the on-air confrontation.
The group's album debuted at #22 on the Billboard chart and sold 48,000 copies in its first week. Managed by Sharon Osbourne (Ozzy's wife), the band has since moved on from the ICP fiasco and joined the "Livin' La Vida Loco Tour" with labelmates Machine Head, Slipknot and AMEN.
ROUZE: Insane Clown Posse bumped you from its tour, and now there's litigation. What happened?
Dez Fafara: They owe us 100,000 dollars, and we're going to get it. It's really ridiculous what they pulled on us-they gave us no soundchecks, no lighting checks, and they didn't let us use any of our pyro. Whatever they want to say in their little wrestler minds is all cool, but the fact is this: half the crowd was leaving every night when we got off stage.
ROUZE: Aside from getting bounced from a major tour, do you have any wild road stories?
Fafara: Well, we've had everything from bus drivers dying or falling asleep and putting us off in a ditch to the usual groupie stuff. But the thing that touches me most is a 12-year-old girl walking up to me going, "My parents put me in a mental institution because I was ditching school, and I was in there for a year. Listening to your music helped me get through it." That's the kind of tour story that I want to remember rather than five dumb girls getting naked.
ROUZE: So have you had five dumb girls getting naked for you?
Meegs Rascon: Usually, the groupies on tour are really young. We're talking about jail bait. Occasionally, you'll get the ones who are over 18, and a lot of them are dancers. On the Insane Clown Posse tour, there was a band-I won't name what band it was-and on their tour bus I had a video camera in hand. In the back, it was a full-blown orgy. It was to the point where I was working every angle, getting a sense of how good I am at directing orgies.
ROUZE: How did it come out?
Rascon: It came out well! I got a money shot and everything.
ROUZE: They didn't mind being taped?
Rascon: No, they didn't care. Everyone was drunk. And the next day, they were like, "Dude, I don't know about that tape." I was like, "You shouldn't have said yes." I promised them I would never show it to anyone, but it's funny just to have. Good memories.
COAL CHAMBER BIO
If there is a thread to carry through Coal Chamber's story, perhaps it is turbulence. Turbulence within the band - turbulence on stage - turbulence in the studio - turbulence in their personal relationships. Formed in Los Angeles in the Spring of 1994, the band quickly recorded a self-produced demo and set out on a street level raid that put their name on every street corner and underneath every slimy rock in L.A. Ensuing word of mouth quickly led to packed shows at well-known Hollywood clubs such as The Whiskey A Go-Go and The Roxy. Within a few months, Coal Chamber were drawing as many people to a club as locally established peers who had been doing the rounds for 2 years. Mixing hip hop, punk, goth and hardcore influences with a thick, molten, down-tuned riffing style, they were marinating their sound, and sweating away in a dark rehearsal room at the same time as then-unknowns Korn were doing the same in Orange County and the Deftones in Sacramento. In the Fall of '95, Dino Cazares of Fear Factory and producer Ross Robinson simultaneously brought Coal Chamber to the attention of Roadrunner VP of A&R, Monte Conner. Blown away by "Loco" (the demo's opener) and intrigued by Dez's schizophrenic vocals, Conner immediately offered them a deal. Life was suddenly easy. They were on the rise. And then, it all came to a halt. According to Dez: "I met my soulmate, and she couldn't deal with the hours, the people I had to work with, just none of it was copasetic to her. I left the band because of her and I left it for almost half a year. But I always missed it. I just missed the music, missed performing, being with my friends and making music with them. I spent most of my days just in a haze, not really inspired anymore. Then my friend Meegs came knocking on my door one day and said, 'Look, none of the singers we've tried have been working out. We really had magic, let's go for it again' and the rest is history." Regrouped by Spring 1995, Dez's decision to commit to Coal Chamber bred a "no-looking-back" attitude that fueled passion and fire into their music. From the opening lines of the twisted "Loco" (now the lead track to their forthcoming self-titled album), it became clear: "Pull - steamroller rollin' through my head said attached to loco power up coal through the system..." This band were here to move forward, letting nothing get in the way. Meanwhile, on stage, the band's performances might better have been called ritual possession, or exorcism-- as if each show were an attempt to simultaneously reconcile the past and set a tone for the future, with the members visually switching their appearances every few months, like writers racing to catch up with their thoughts. With Coal Chamber no longer a question of "if" but instead "how good and how soon", they put their urgency and determination together with matured perspectives gained from their time away.
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COAL CHAMBER RISES ABOVE THE REST ON BILLBOARD'S HOT 100
The album debuted on Billboard Magazine's HOT 100 charts at #22, making it the label's highest album debut. First week sales totaled over 48K.
*The new video "Shock the Monkey" from the new album "Chamber Music", features Ozzy and made its world premiere on MTV's "1999: Return of the Rock" show in September.