“You guys gotta really stop playing Nickelback every time you put me on hold,” starts off Chimaira frontman Mark Hunter over the phone earlier this afternoon. Yes, if you call the Roadrunner US office and are put on hold, you will hear a mix CD of RR music being played…Mark’s luck of the draw today, he got put on hold whilst Nickelback was a crankin’. As for a bad luck of the draw, we have confirmed reports that the “Chimaira Curse” has struck yet again. First, the set for the band’s video shoot catches fire, and then a month later – after just a week’s worth of tour dates in support of their upcoming The Impossibility Of Reason release – crash. Earlier on April 21, Chimaira’s bus slid out of control crashing into construction barricades. Somewhere outside of Pittsburgh – en route from the tour’s sixth show (Showplace Theater in Buffalo, New York) to the next in Springfield, Virginia – in heavy rain, Chimaira’s bus hit oil causing a chain reaction of events: loss of control, brakes locking, skidding into a construction barricade, getting airborne, and all windows exploding. Recalls Mark, “at around 5:00 in the morning, for some reason I woke up and grabbed onto my bunk, grabbed onto anything I could hold. (It just) felt like something was gonna happen, like I subconsciously knew, and then all the sudden…” And then all the sudden the slip, crash, wheelie. “With so much weight in the back of the (45 foot) bus including a fifteen foot trailer, the bus did a wheelie at one point and the front end clipped a barricade coming down, taking some of the concrete with it,” Mark continues. And apparently ‘said’ concrete jammed the door, leaving the new exit/entrance point of the bus being the front window. Thankfully, nobody was hurt and no other cars were involved in the wreck. All are just a bit shaken up… But there is a lighter side as Mark goes on, “Funniest thing, right after it happened was seeing everyone’s head pop out of their bunks in unison.” Oh, and about a half hour after the fact, one of the band members questioned, “What should we do now?” The answer? “Two chicks at the same time, man,” replied Chimaira’s drum tech in the unmistakable voice of Lawrence from the movie ‘Office Space.’ But of course! At last word, somehow the bus was able to carry on, and the band was heading towards Butler, Pennsylvania in the jalopy with no windows. The bus was then to be dropped off for repairs and the band would jump into a van in order to try and make the show in Springfield. No confirmation they will make the show. “(Will) do our best to make it to the show, should be there…will be there for the rest of the tour.” “The Chimaira Curse strikes again,” concludes Mark. “We’ve never done a tour without some huge vehicle fiasco yet.” For all upcoming Chimaira tour dates, check our TOUR section. New album The Impossibility Of Reason in stores May 12th.