Guitarist Shaun Lopez Loves Far’s Metalhead Following, Saddened by Chi Cheng’s Situation

For years, fans of Far have wanted the band to set aside its differences and reunite. If a reunion yielded a new disc, that would have been great. But for most of those fans, they just wanted the band to play a few shows. The good news is, the band's almost done mixing its comeback LP, and will probably tour around the record's release early next year.

Many of those fans, longing for a return of the post-hardcore outfit that influenced a string of emo acts, were of the longhaired variety: metalheads. For guitarist Shaun Lopez, the fact that Far has a lot of metal fans is something of a badge of honor.

"That's very cool, because I'm a metal fan, but I'm very limited in what I like in metal, and I probably only like five metal bands," he says. "I love metal, I just think a lot of its crap. I like longhair metal. Give me some Lamb of God, and I'm good."

He doesn't know why Far's music appeals to headbangers. "It's the riffs, man," he jokes. "I don't know, dude, but that's cool. I love that. The thing is, I just don't think we fit in with any sort of genre. We influenced some of the more emo bands that are bigger now, but if you look at all of our songs, we don't fit with that. They just probably got influenced by a certain side of us, but I think there's many different sides to us. So maybe that's it. Maybe its because we play a little something for everyone."

Lopez is mixing the rest of the Far record at his Airport Studio, where he tracked Deftones frontman Chino Moreno's vocals for 2006's 'Saturday Night Wrist.' We asked Lopez about Deftones bassist Chi Cheng, and how he's recovering from his coma-inducing car accident back in late November.

"His progress is very limited to none, so its just...it's a pretty sad situation," Lopez reflects. "Its almost one of those things that doesn't seem real. When someone dies, you know, it's a different thing. They're gone. But its like, he's still there, but he's kind of not, so its definitely an unreal thing. But it makes you realize that life is short and it takes something like that happening to sometimes get people to realize we're all pretty lucky to be here. You just gotta think about him, and keep him in your thoughts. There's not much else you can do."