The Real Infection: Coronavirus Stops Chimaira From Playing Live + Possibly Making New Music

October 19th, 2020 at 9:59am
Axl Rosenberg

Not that you needed another reason to loathe the pandemic, but here’s another reason to loathe the pandemic: according to Chimaira guitarist Rob Arnold, the band not only had one of their Chimaira Christmas shows booked for 2020 — which would have been their first show since Chimaira Christmas 2017 — but they were in the “infancy stage” of writing new music.

This accordring to a new interview with Pierre Gutiérrez (transcription via The PRP):

“We had the next ‘Chimaira Christmas‘ show, which was gonna be Christmas of 2020… [It[ had been booked, but it hadn’t been announced yet. We weren’t gonna announce it until probably mid-summer… We had already even started talking about setlists and stuff like that. And then along with that came the talks of ‘Hey, why don’t we start writing some music and just start putting some riffs together and sending them back and forth?’ and that didn’t really get out of any infancy stage. There aren’t any songs or anything yet that are in the archives or anything like that. That never really lifted off. Because right at that same moment is when COVID hit. And obviously everybody had to make huge adjustments right then. And just everything was put on hold. A few weeks later the show was cancelled…”

Talk about an INFECTION! Any chance of a… RESURRECTION?* Sez Rob:

“All I can say is maybe we’ll try for next year. Hopefully this time next year, everything that should have been happening right now will be happening, but I can’t say—no one can say.”

GOD. MOTHERFUCKING. DAMNIT. Not only would the sixteenth (!) Chimaira Christmas have been the band’s first show in three years, but if they had produced any new music, it would have been the first time they released new material since 2013’s Crown of Phantoms, and the first time they released new material with (most) of their classic, the first time they released new material with Arnold since 2011’s Age of Hell, and the first time they released new music with guitarist Matt DeVries, bassist Jim LaMarca, and keyboardist Chris Spicuzza since 2009’s The Infection (I believe drummer Andols Herrick is still sidelined by health issues; his spot was filled at the 2017 show by DevilDriver’s Austin D’Amond, who played on Hell and Phantoms).

So, yeah. This blows. It blows hard. Like. Dunno even know what else to say. Fuck 2020 in the ear. Fuck it in the other ear.

You can watch the entire interview with Arnold below.