Cleveland, Ohio-based sextet Chimaira have a full-blown "Resurrection" on their hands. Chimaira parted company with Roadrunner Records and signed a new deal with Ferret Music, and original drummer Andols Herrick returned after a one-album absence. These two factors have given them a second chance as a band and the freedom to make Resurrection the way they wanted it to sound and make it at their own pace. Herrick left the band for a short while for personal reasons, and death metal drummer Kevin Talley (Dying Fetus, the Red Chord) recorded and toured with the band on the last CD, Chimaira, which Roadrunner allegedly failed to promote to the band's liking.

      Chimaira guitarist Rob Arnold recently discussed the new CD.

     InsideCx: What does the title Resurrection specifically mean to the band?

     RA: The band has gone through a resurrection; not so much a rebirth, but more of a second chance to show that we still have a lot of life in us and that the best music from Chimaira is yet to come. Resurrection sums up the last year with our getting off of Roadrunner Records and signing with Ferret/Nuclear Blast.

     InsideCx: How is the new deal with Ferret panning out for you?

     RA: It's been totally awesome! There is a combination of things making this the best time ever for the band, the vibe is at an all-time high, and now we finally see what a label should be and what we wanted from a label in terms of promotion, marketing, artist development, saying yes to ideas we have and overall having a fresh group of enthusiastic guys behind the project who are interested in pushing it and building the band the way that we want to do it. Those were the types of things with Roadrunner that were not recognized for us.

     InsideCx: It seems like Roadrunner either does a great job or bands leave feeling that they were not taken care of.

     RA: Of course, when we first got signed to Roadrunner we were super excited; it's like the Mecca of all metal labels. If you are expected to make good music, you expect to be taken care of. When we sent them the first batch of songs for the self-titled record, they said flat-out, "We are not going to do anything for this. We are just going to put it out, because these songs are totally brutal, they are longer, there is no radio stuff and if you don't give us the video stuff then we are not going to do anything with the record." They said, "You guys are a staple name on the Roadrunner roster," and we wanted much more than that.

     InsideCx: What do you think that you have all brought to the table on this record?

     RA: It was completely natural because there were no expectations; we went into it thinking we could do whatever we wanted to, they signed us without hearing a single demo. The skill level of everybody has greatly improved. When Andols came back he had not played drums for over a year, maybe two, and he knew he was going to have to work on his chops and play everything that Kevin Talley, an extreme death metal drummer, had done. [Andols] is a super-hard worker and a perfectionist. He stepped it up 50-fold and it shows on the record.

     InsideCx: The riffs are insanely fast, brutal and heavy, the solos are pure metal and there is a lot of cool Middle Eastern harmony there for that extra layer of texture on new songs like "Six" and "Killing The Beast."

     RA: I really like that sound. Those types of scales work so well over dark riffs. Andols calls "Killing the Beast" the "treadmill song" because it is like he is running on a treadmill the whole time.