DEVILDRIVER – Interview with guitarist Mike Spreitzer

It is always difficult to start over. Whether it be from a long-term relationship or the end of a career, beginnings are always difficult. Dez Fefara was faced with this uphill battle after leaving the vastly popular band, COAL CHAMBER. To make matters worse, he formed a new band, DEVILDRIVER, who plays a much heavier style. Since the group's inception, though, he has made his way through constant touring with the likes of such metal superstar bands as TRIVIUM, OPETH, DARK TRANQUILITY, and the blockbuster, OZZFEST in 2004. The combination of hardcore touring, consistent label support from RoadRunner Records, and creating no-bullshit metal, the group's momemtem is definitely on the upswing. I caught up with the group's guitarist Mike Spreitzer before their performance in San Antonio, Texas on tour with KATAKLYSM, UNEARTH, and DIMMU BORGIR.

How's the tour going so far?

So far, so good, man. This is our third time touring with UNEARTH and our second time touring with DIMMU since Ozzfest in 2004. It's been good. We've had fun. We never really got a chance to get to know DIMMU on Ozzfest, they were on the mainstage. Some guys hang out, the tour's been good and it's been fun.

This is an international tour: you have two bands from the states (UNEARTH, DEVILDRIVER), one from Canada (KATAKLYSM) and one from Norway (DIMMU BORGIR) so what country drinks the best, man?

(Laughs) Probably us. I don't know, it seems to be pretty even. There are quite a few people in every band that

drink. We've all been having fun together.

What's the best place you've played so far? What is your favorite show so far?

For this tour, I would say L.A., surprisingly enough, which is usually one of the most successful shows along with

Chicago and New York City. We had a really good show in L.A., which made me happy because that's my hometown. My family was there and I had a bunch of friends there, so I was really happy that the show went well.

Do you guys have any interesting stories, any complications?

Tour stories…(Mike ponders). Every day out here is a kind of story. You wake up, do your thing and play the

show. You drink more days than you don't. If I stayed sober, I would probably remember a little more. Offhand, I can't really think of anything. I'm really kind of glad that I don't have any amazing stories. The stories you normally remember are about bad things. The tour's been so much fun, and so good. I think I've only been deathly hungover once on this tour. When we were in Minneapolis, I had to start drinking with my bass player at about noon to hide the hangover so we could both play the show. Other than that, things have been pretty smooth.

Tell Me about “The Last Kind Words.”

Great album! Definitely, in all of our opinions, the best DEVILDRIVER album we've done so far. We all had to step it up quite a bit as far as our playing skills. The songs are faster, it's more melodic, there's like eight guitar solos, we've never had more than two on a record in the past. We never really worked with good guitar players as

producers. We had Roth and Colin Richardson, who are great. I didn't work with Roth as a producer, but Mark Lewis and Jason Suecof are both amazing guitar players. It was a lot of fun working with them. They were like, “why don't you do something like this,” (Spreitzer makes a motion with his fingers flying all around, like on a guitar's fret). I'm gonna have to work on that for a couple of days to play

that.Things like that really pushed us, had a lot of great ideas. It went smoothly. We finished so quickly. We

finished in something like three weeks. We demoed

everything in my studio at home. We basically had

everything and cut all the fat off most the songs, so we didn't really have to do pre-production. We went there with

our producers, who were like, “dude, that songs good.” They listened to the demoes. I emailed all the demoes

before we met up with them in the studio in El Paso. Things went great. Everyone seems to be liking it.

Hardfiles on Roadrunner's website did a preview of the album. So was the response from those previews?

So far things have been good. Everyone at the label is flipping out over it. Monte Conner, the head of Roadrunner

is loving it. He was on Sirius Radio, on Hard Attack and the dj asked him what the next big thing is going to

be as far as metal and he said, “DEVILDRIVER.” Fuck yeah! Coming from him that's a pretty big thing for us.

I haven't talked to anybody yet that didn't like or say it was amazing. We all have a really good feeling about

this record. I guarantee all the DEVILDRIVER fans out there are going to love it, and it bring us a lot more

fans this year.

Can you go a little more into detail and talk about your album?

Twelve songs: I wrote about three, the other guys wrote about three. Dez doesn't write the music, he does lyrics.

He doesn't play any instruments. It was more of an equal approach. We all had more of an even influence on

this record. The first record was pretty much written by Evan, the guy I replaced. The second record was

mostly written by my bass player and my drummer. This one is has more of an even approach, as far as the songs

go. I had a lot more influence this time. I remember being up in Denver last year, we had been playing at the

Gothic Theatre. Me and the drummer and been up all night, drinking a bottle of wine in the alley behind the

venue and we said, “man, we've got to do a damn good job on this record; otherwise, we're done!” It's our third

record. It sucks, but if we do a bad job, you can kiss our ass goodbye!

Why would you make a statement so bold as that.

It meant a lot to us. We've gone this far, our career has been going like this (he motions his hand upward).

The second I joined the band, things have been getting better and better everyday. We wanted to make sure we

didn't blow it on this record. We wanted to make sure every single song was special. It's just the fact that

better song writing. On some of the songs, we didn't follow a normal song writing approach. We did our own

thing, yet made it faster and more brutal, at the same time.

Because there was more of an equal share in the song writing, did that bring more elements to it?

I think so. I think it is very diverse. There are no songs that sound alike. You get a lot of different elements coming together in one place for songs. Musically, it kind of forced Dez to write in different styles for the record. He doesn't sing on the records, he does his signature screaming. The music effects the lyrics as much as the lyrics effect the music. It's different, it's in a new direction, but it's still DEVILDRIVER.

This is the third album you've released on Roadrunner. Are you really happy with the label support you've

gotten?

Yes. They've been good to us, and it seems that with every record, they get a little more excited about

DEVIL DRIVER. You can't be unhappy with that.

Do you still have more albums on your contract with Roadrunner?

There's options. I don't see why. There will be a fourth and a fifth DEVILDRIVER record.

And you do think it will be on Roadrunner?

Most definitely.

You guys have toured with a lot of bands and a lot of different types of bands. You've done the tour with

OPETH and DARK TRANQUILITY. Now you're touring with DIMMU BORGIR. Have you gained a lot of fans, and different types of fans? Do you see album sales going up because of the tour?

Yeah, when you're not touring, album sales go down. And when you're touring, no matter what tour, album sales go up. They seem to be going up. It's a good thing because it's showing our crowd's getting bigger and bigger with every tour that we do. Whether a headlining tour or a

support tour, our record sales keep going up, which means our old fans are coming back and we're getting new fans too. The record's still selling, it's been out for two years now. I'm not sure what the first one is doing, but it's getting up there. It's all metal that we've been out with. Like with this one, we have KATAKLYSM that is death metal. With us, I would just put us in the metal category. UNEARTH has the hardcore thing going on. DIMMU is black metal. I would call us more straight-forward metal. We're not black metal, but people into black metal will get to hear us, and

they might like us.

Do you think you're gaining a lot of fans from the different genres?

Yeah, obviously. There are a lot of people like me. I like all sorts of metal. I don't just listen to black metal or one type of metal, I also listen to stuff like Industrial metal, and shit like that. I think there's a lot of people out there still who have heard the name, but haven't heard us, and maybe got a chance to see us and thought, “ok, these are guys I can get into.” It has obviously shown. Things are good. We've had a good response. It definitely seems like our fan base is growing and growing on every tour.

So you're just about done with this tour, I think you're going to Atlanta tomorrow…

We're doing New Orleans tomorrow, then Atlanta before going to Orlando, Florida, which would be the last day of the tour. We can do it because we've got to go over to Europe. We've got to cut that date because we're going to Rock Im Park Festival in Germany, I believe. We're going to be there for about a month. We've got some shows with LIFE OF AGONY. We're opening up for them, one with LAMB OF GOD, one as direct support for SLAYER. We're opening up for them. Twenty-thousand-seater, man! Download festival. We did Castle Donnington last year. We did that for two, too because SOILWORK got cancelled, which is unfortunate becaue they're one of my favorite bands. I still haven't seen them, yet.