Metal Anarchy

During a recent interview with Loaded Radio, guitarist Mike Spreitzer further addressed his departure from DevilDriver. Notably, he also revealed that he never spoke to frontman Dez Fafara about his decision.

Spreitzer said the following:

“It is bittersweet for sure. I will never regret my time in DevilDriver. The good always outweighed the bad. I still have a lot of love for all the guys in the band and I wish them well. And I’m even kind of excited to see who ends up replacing me. And I will always offer — whoever that person may be, I’m here to help with whatever they need. And I wanna see the band succeed. There’s no negative feelings on my side.

I wanna get back to being a full-time musician, like I said. I went to music school in college — I was a music major — and music, ever since I was six years old, has always been the plan. I would say that was my first moment of real clarity in my life when I was watching MTV and I saw the video for ‘Pour Some Sugar On Me’ by Def Leppard, and for some reason, that just made something go click in my brain, and nothing’s changed since that moment.”

He continued when asked how the band reacted to the news:

“Honestly, I haven’t spoken to Dez about it. No, I haven’t. I’ve seen how things have went when other members have left the band, and I honestly felt like this was the best way to do it.

I don’t really wanna get into it much more than that because of obvious reasons, but all the other guys understood where I was coming from. And I wanna work more, and as of now, unless someone comes knocking on my door that wants me to join a band, which, depending on the band, I would definitely take into consideration, but right now I just wanna go full throttle with my new project Verona On Venus.

I’m excited to do things my own way and mix things up. Obviously, Verona sounds a lot different than DevilDriver — it’s a completely different style of music — and it’s time for something new for me. It’s been 20 years, and it’s been a lot of fun, but sometimes people just feel like moving on, and that’s how I feel right now.”

He also added the following when asked if someone, seemingly Fafara, was upset about Verona On Venus:

“Unfortunately, yes. I really hoped it wouldn’t be a problem, and I have a lot of friends that get a lot of support from the bands that they’re in, who they would consider their boss. Like Nita [Strauss] and Alice Cooper; Ozzy [Osbourne] has always been cool with Zakk Wylde doing Black Label Society and Zakk Sabbath. Cesar [Soto] from Ministry — I remember when he first released MAN The Mute record that he did, I bumped into [Ministry leader] Al Jourgensen at an art show once and he just couldn’t stop talking about how proud he was of Cesar. Monte Pittman, he’s in Ministry, and Madonna seems to be just fine with him doing that. And even Zakk Wylde with his drummer Jeff Fabb; [Jeff] just released a record on his own. And so I really didn’t see it being a problem. I never intended to make Verona a priority over DevilDriver. I had a lot of time during the pandemic, and I just wanted to keep on writing, so I did.”

He continued after the interviewer said the issue is “odd” since Fafara has been spending time with Coal Chamber:

“Yeah, unfortunately, it is, because I really gave him my blessing, when Coal Chamber started doing — even when they were at their first reunion. And at their first reunion, quite honestly, I needed the break at the time. Unfortunately, I think that was a big reason which led to John Boecklin and Jeff Kendrick leaving the band [in 2014], because DevilDriver went on hiatus and it was not in their best interest at the time to stick around.”

[via Blabbermouth]