Mike Spreitzer, the former guitarist of DEVILDRIVER, has not communicated with the band’s frontman, Dez Fafara, regarding Fafara‘s recent departure. Spreitzer had been a long-standing member of the band, second only to Fafara, who was the sole original member remaining.
In a recent interview with Scott Penfold of Loaded Radio, Mike spoke about his decision to leave DEVILDRIVER.
“It is bittersweet for sure,” Mike said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “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,” he continued. “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.”
When asked how the other members of DEVILDRIVER responded to his decision to leave, Mike said: “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,” Spreitzer continued. “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.”
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