Coal Chamber

“We didn’t stray off that dramatically, people will be able to tell it is us, but I think people will see the maturity of it,” says drummer Mike Cox of Coal Chamber’s newest release, Chamber Music. The album has its roots in the downtuned, Korn-styled metal of Coal Chamber’s self-titled debut, but incorporates newer influences such as keyboards, new wave and an increased emphasis on songwriting. “Touring was a big part of the sound of the new album. It made us mature musically, it made us grow. The first album was one dimensional — on the new one we have more sounds, it’s very much like a landscape, it’s three dimensional and there are more life lessons. The first album is all about Dez (Fafara, Singer), and his troubles with his wife. “We kind of got lumped in with all these other bands coming out around the same time,” says Mike of concurrent rise of Korn, Deftones and Limp Bizkit. “It was cool for what it’s worth, but it kind of holds you back.” One of the highlights of the new album is a cover of Peter Gabriel’s “Shock the Monkey,” featuring metal deity Ozzy Osbourne. Mike fears their intentions might be misconstrued, “We wanted to do the song for five years, when the original came out, it was dark, for a pop song, and we respected that. Now, all these other bands come out doing covers, so we wanted to make ours very anti-pop, we did it very heavy, we put Ozzy on it, who is definitely anti-pop. A lot of these bands do covers and it sounds nothing like the rest of their album, so it seems they’re doing it just because they are desperate to get big. Our version sounds like us.