Coal Chamber: Whatever Happened To the Nu-Metal band Behind 'Loco?'

Coal Chamber: The rise and the fall of the band behind loco

0:00 - Early Years
4:30 - Label Years/Big Management
7:52 - Breakup
9:49 - Reunion/Breakup

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#dezfafara #coalchamber #loco

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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, t