Coal Chamber are playing without Mikey Cox. The drummer shattered a femur in a game of pickup basketball with his son, took the winning shot on the way down, and collided with another parent hard enough to land on concrete.
Surgery followed, with three pins, and he has been told he will not be walking for at least six weeks. He is forty nine. In April he made public a cancer diagnosis and the treatment that went with it, and he connects the two things himself: after chemotherapy, radiation and three operations, he says, his bones were fragile and could not take the fall.
"I've played through fractured fingers, dislocated shoulders and cancer treatment, but this time I simply can't overcome it in time," he wrote. He misses the band's set at Sick New World Texas in Fort Worth on 24 October and the Halloween show at the House Of Blues in Anaheim on 31 October, where P.O.D., Cradle Of Filth and Black Satellite share the bill.
DevilDriver drummer Davier Perez Ortega takes the stool for both, which Cox describes as the obvious call rather than a favour. "He's been with me for years, has my complete trust, and is basically the 5th member of Coal Chamber." Cox says he hopes to be in the Anaheim crowd.