The bandThe name
The band had a list of different names that they were trying to decide upon when Jason Genaro, the original drummer, discovered 'Chimaira' in a dictionary. Chimaira is derived from the monster in Ancient Greek mythology, the 'Chimaera'. Comprised of three lethal parts (the head of a lion, the body of a goat and the tail of a dragon) the Chimaera breathed fire and fear into the hearts of many. There are several spellings of the word, they chose this spelling because it also can be translated to a different meaning. It means an unreachable dream... a fabrication of the mind. If you read their lyrics you can understand why that additional meaning was chosen. (Other possible names for the band were Sphere, Rupture, and Blood For Nine)
How do you pronounce 'Chimaira' ?
'Chimaira' is pronounced: "kim-ear-a"
When, where and how did the band form?
Chimaira formed in the Fall of 1998 in Cleveland, Ohio. Jason Hager was unhappy playing bass in the band Ascension so he quit. He and his friend Jason Genaro got a hold of Mark while he was living in Cincinnati to see if he would sing. Mark agreed and then found Andrew Emrlick who then brought in Rob Arnold. Later a few members were replaced by other...
First show ever
March 20, 1999 at The Flying Machine in Cleveland opening for Today Is The Day and Napalm Death.
The 6th member
Chris Spicuzza was in a band that practiced next door to Chimaira and did alot of promotion and website work for Chimaira. About a week after the recording of This Present Darkness when his old band broke up he joined Chimaira to add an electronic element to their sound.
Song writing
"Basically what we do is Rob and I write all the music ‘cause he plays drums and guitars as well as I do. So whoever's got the riff, ya know, we'll jump behind a kit and just sorta start structuring it from there and then after we have the basic skeleton, our drummer, Andols, will come in and just start playing and will obviously annihilate whatever we wrote on drums. And we just take it from there. Once the song is completed Chris will take it home and fuck with it and put all his sounds on it and stuff like that. So it's kinda separated. It's not a process where we're all in the room. My philosophy is "too many cooks spoil the stew," ya know, so that's why we try to keep it limited as possible." - Mark Hunter
"The way we write music is that I am the last person to come up with everything. The music to me sets the mood to what I'm going to write. When I write the lyrics, I'm basing them off of personal experiences that I've gone through but I try to leave them open enough so that whoever is listening to our record can make up their own interpretation of what I am saying."
Signing to Roadrunner
In March of 2000 their manager took their demo to Kevin Estrada (A&R for RR) in LA. At first Roadrunner wasn't too interested so the band kept writing, demoing, and playing shows until Roadrunner slowly began to understand what Chimaira was about. In August of 2000 the band had a chance to perform on the TV show Farmclub.com and soon after it aired Roadrunner made an offer, although Chimaira were unable to sign the contract until a legal situation with their independent label, East Coast Empire Records, was resolved.
Working with Stephen Carpenter
"Andols and Rob. Jim and I went to L.A. a couple months before we got signed. We met him at the Rainbow, which is the restaurant where all the rock gods hang out. It was really fucked up for us. He was sitting there with B-Real and Dino. Dino knew who we were because I had given him a CD a long time ago. We had talked to him about producing our record. It was a crazy night. We were at Stephen's house and he was playing our song. He was playing "Dead Inside" which was on the Loudside sampler. He put that on and Dino was playing it on the guitar. I looked over and everyone else was singing the words. I was looking at Jim saying, "What the fuck!"" "We ended up recording out there in L.A. and we would see him every night. He said, "Hey, I'm going to come down and write a song with you guys." We said, "Right! Sure you are!" He called us three days before we were done. We had already packed everything up and he called to say he was coming down. We said, "Alright." So we unpacked everything. If the song wasn't going to be good, we wouldn't have kept it. We wound up loving the song so there it is on the record. It's cool. I'm a huge fan of the song and we rocked out. It wasn't like, "Oh my God, we need to get this guy from the Deftones on our album." We just jammed." - Mark Hunter
Chimaira in movies
A "Pass Out Of Existence" poster appears in the movie "Rules Of Attraction" in the scene where Fred Savage lays on his bed and shoots heroin.
This Present Darkness
Recorded in three days (November 1st to 3rd, 1999)
The sample at the end of "Sphere" is taken from a movie which the band are big fans of, "The Shawshank Redemption".
The hidden tracks, "Empty" and "Silence" were recorded with original bassist, AE. The band wanted the songs to be on the record and for AE to be part of the record but they didn't have the money to bring him in to re-record them so they used the demo versions of the tracks. The two tracks are hidden so that the CD can be sold at the price of an EP.
"Empty" features guest vocals from Rob of the band Canister.
"Silence" features guest vocals from John Marino, Doug Esper, and Dan Pelleteir.
"When we were recording This Present Darkness, we got a little slap happy one day during intense tracking. Ben Schigel of Sw1tched was producing the record and to lighten up the situation, he started acting like he was in Helloween and just went nuts. We recorded him with a video camera and just thought it would be amusing for you all to hear. He added the fake crowd noise, and the funny thing about that was people actually thought that was a real live show and that we acted like that -riiiiiiiiight. Ben also pronounced our name wrong intentionally during it, so now a lot of people think that is how we pronounce the band name."
The Chimaira logo, chaos symbol, tray card painting, layout and photo manipulation were all done by Jason Hager.
The picture on the cover is actually a photo of drummer Andols Herrick that Jason took and manipulated. They liked how it turned out and it fit the title of the CD so they decided to use it as the cover.
The image on the backcover of the cd is of a woman who is a lookalike of a former girlfriend of Mark's, whom he speaks about in tracks 13 and 14. "It is not meant to be in any way degrading to her, it was my way of working through the turmoil that ensued with the demise of our relationship".
Pass Out Of Existence
The recording process was completed in 4 weeks and then mixing was finished in 2 weeks (April-May 2001).
"Rizzo" is named after a dog which was in the studio during the recording process.
Two songs which don't appear on North American versions of the album we're also recorded. "Without Moral Restraint" appears as track #15 on UK, Australian, and Japanese versions of the album and a re-recorded version of their cover of The Cure's "Fascination Street" appears on "The Heart Of Roadrunner" compilation that was released in 2003.
The album's artwork was done by Animated Noise Studios. "We wanted something that looks futuristic, evil, yet dark and depressing and violent. Basically, if you look at our record cover, that's what it is."
The Impossibility Of Reason
Recording began on November 26, 2002 and finished in early January, 2003
The album title came from a scene in the movie "Platoon" where Charlie Sheen is writing to his grandmother and says "Hell is the impossibility of reason. That's what this place feels like, hell".
"I thought that would be the perfect way to describe what we were going through. This band has gone through some tough shit, and we just keep getting stronger. It is impossible to reason with us at this point in our lives - we know what we are going to do and that is that.
"We wanted a title that would really grab you. Lyrically there are 3 themes for the record, rejection, revenge and repercussion. The title needed to reflect those themes as well. Basically, in a nutshell The Impossibility of Reason is our fuck you to a lot of people. We have been rejected, this record is our revenge and only the future will tell us what our repercussions will be."
The guitars on the album are 6-stringed and tuned to C, the original tuning the band used when they started out.
Japanese and UK versions of the album include"Army of Me" as a bonus track
Another song called "Indifferent To Suffering" will be used as a b-side.
A song called "Stay The Same" was written but the band felt the song was too weak to be considered a Chimaira song. "We would not release anything that did not represent our band in the correct way, even if it meant we would have gotten a lot of radio play. That is not fair to our fans, or to the people that might have bought the record after hearing this great radio song, what would they have thought after hearing Pure Hatred."
The voice at the beginning of Power Trip is a trucker saying "he had god like power". The studio was next to a highway and their equipment would sometimes pick up CB radio signals from trucks passing by.
Power Trip was the first song written for the album, Eyes Of A Criminal was written during the last week of practice before recording began, Crawl was written in the studio, and the writing of Implements Of Destruction began in the Fall of 2001 when the band was on tour with Machine Head.
