By Ryan Sparks

Canadian shredder Glen Drover’s rise to prominence began with the power metal band Eidolon, which he formed with his brother / drummer, Shawn in the mid 90’s. While the band was never hugely successful, they built up a loyal fan base and went on to release eight full length albums from 1996-2006. Glen’s big break finally arrived when both he and Shawn joined Megadeth in 2004. For four years Glen toured and recorded with one of the world’s most legendary heavy metal bands, reveling in the worldwide acclaim and recognition that it brought him. However, what initially began as a dream gig, gradually went sour and he ended up leaving the band in 2008. After the dust cleared, he picked up the pieces and began to assemble a new project that over time gradually evolved into an album’s worth of material. The ten track instrumental, solo debut Metalusion, is like the title implies, an all out meeting of metal and fusion. Split evenly down the middle between five originals and five splendid interpretations written by the likes of Jean-Luc Ponty, Frank Zappa and Al DiMeola, Metalusion is an absolutely kick ass, full on, explosive effort, that explores a multitude of various different textures and emotions. With the release of the album right around the corner I caught up with Glen to discuss the new disc in detail, as well as to get him to reflect a bit on his time with both Megadeth and Eidolon.

Glen: It was real loose in the beginning. What happened was after I had chilled out for a bit after leaving that band, I started to get a little itchy to do some recording. I thought it would be cool to do something instrumental. I just didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do at that point only that I wanted to do something instrumental. I called a friend of mine in Winnipeg, he’s a drummer, his name is Chris Sutherland and he plays with Kim Mitchell as well. I talked to him about this idea of doing something instrumental, which would be more focused on the music. He was totally interested in doing something, so we decided that maybe we should start by recording a cover, just to see where things would go. He also recommended a couple of friends of his; one was Paul (Yee) who also lives in Winnipeg. They had played together and he was going on about how much of a monster bassist he is and how well they play together. He also recommended Jim Gilmour from Saga, because Chris had played drums for them for a brief period. I picked out “Egyptian Danza” by Al DiMeola, just to kind of do a little test and it came out great. We had the drum and bass tracks done in Winnipeg and Jim and I did everything else here in and around the Toronto area. We were really excited about it and knew we had something really cool and that we would all work together really well. At that point I said ‘Let’s try one more cover for fun’. I was going to pick out a Jean Luc Ponty cover. I picked two songs, but I couldn’t decide which one I wanted to use, so we just did both of them and they turned out so well that they ended up being on the album. It was at that point that we decided to do an album, so we started putting things together. Jim sent me some ideas, I started writing some stuff and Paul sent me stuff. It was a real collaboration, even though my names on the album, it is really a band thing. Nobody could come up with a name as well [laughs]. I just said ‘Well let’s put it under my name’ and that’s how it went.

Glen: It is. I mean there’s a lot of guitar solos going around that’s for sure, but it’s not all me because we’ve got some guests on there as well. Jim and I also did some cool trade-offs too, so I definitely look at it more that way. For me to do something that would be all me and just hire some guys and tell them to do this and that, I would rather do it this way, where it’s more of a band thing. That to me is more exciting than doing something on your own and getting just anybody to play on it.

Glen: No, it wasn’t actually. I know the styles of each of these guitarists, so I would think of a different song for a different guy. I didn’t really analyze it to death, I just did that to see how it would go and it all turned out great. Everybody did a great job. I didn’t have to ask anybody to try another one or anything like that. What you hear is pretty much the first take of what everybody did.

Glen: Yeah, you’re right. It’s not like I felt like I had prove something. It was just done purely because I wanted to. It’s nice to be able to do that and branch out a little bit, while still retaining the metal elements that I’ve done in the past. Every album that I’ve done is metal, so it’s nice that I can retain that, but also take it to other areas you know? I mean it’s primarily aggressive music, but there are just a lot of different styles on there. It was really nice to just kind of branch out a little bit. It’s totally coming straight from the heart and it’s not trying to jump on any bandwagon, because we have enough of that don’t we? It’s all about doing what you want to do and what makes you happy. This is what makes me happy and I think it shows.

Glen: Yeah, I know what you’re saying. It’s all fragmented and you’re not really getting the entire feel for the entire project that the band is working on.

Glen: That is an art, sequencing the songs. You want to put them in the proper order so it does make sense. I actually went over it quite a few times. My brother Shawn is pretty good at doing that. When we did all the Eidolon albums he pretty much always chose the order. So it’s definitely something to be very conscious of and you want to be careful with it, because that’s very important when you’re listening to the album. It’s not necessarily putting all the stronger songs in the front end. I think it’s about having it where you get from one song to the next and you can tell it’s the next song, you know what I mean?

Glen: Thank you. That’s what I was trying to do.

Glen: “Illusions” is half mine and half Paul’s. We were able to collaborate on that song and come up with some pretty neat arrangements on there. It has more of a proggy kind of feel and it’s pretty moody, almost dark, on the front end. That’s just how it came about. He had some ideas and I had some ideas and we structured it that way, so that’s pretty much what the style of that song is. It has a bit more of a prog feel to it.

“Colors of Infinity” and “Ascension”, those two songs share the same kind of idea, where they’re a bit more melodic and you have the guitar theme kind of acting as the vocal melody, if you want to call it that. In “Colors”, the middle section takes a bit of a strange detour and then comes back to the original structure.

Glen: Yeah, that’s what I was trying to do.

Glen: “Ground Zero” is also collaboration, this time between Jim and I. It was kind of put together in the same way as “Illusions”, where we both had these ideas and we structured it into a song that hopefully has a cool flow to it. The front end is definitely inspired by a lot of 70’s fusion, but when I put my guitar sound on it it’s more aggressive and there you have it.

“Frozen Dream” is a song that Jim wrote. It was actually two songs that he wrote and I thought there was a section from each of them that I felt could be made into one song. So I just messed around with the structure. The songs weren’t completed, but I put the demos in Pro Tools and started moving pieces around, trying to build the structure. It kind of went from there.

Glen: No, but they’re definitely not something I’ve heard anyone do before. Typically you might get someone doing a cover of “Yellow Snow” or something like that, so it’s definitely one of his more obscure tracks. That was meant to be one piece, but due to certain reasons we had to split the track up. The first part is only like a minute long. The song is called “The Purple Lagoon”, The beginning of the original version of the song is very sad, which is great. I love that song. Recently I got a Frank Zappa live CD from the vaults, that the family just released and on it Frank does a version of that song, where the beginning has a much slower tempo. It was kind of like the introduction to the show. What happened was, I heard that and I already had this idea to do the other song “Filthy Habits”, which comes from the Lather album. I thought the tempos were kind of the same, so I wondered what it would sound like if I put the front end of “Purple Lagoon”, the real wacky part and have it go right into “Filthy Habits”, which is really just more hypnotic. It’s a pattern that repeats and it’s got some weird soloing in it. I didn’t copy what Frank did, because the nature of all that stuff is that it’s very free-from. If he had played another track of it, I don’t think he would have played the same thing twice, I guarantee it. So it was really coming from that world, which is fun anyway because it’s more about adlibbing. I wasn’t trying to play it like him either.

Glen: Yeah, exactly. It was just this idea and I figured I’d try it and see what happens. Once I had the drum track and then started putting guitars on it I said ‘Wow this is going to be kind of neat’. Like the other tracks, we were so happy with the results that we felt we had to include them. That’s the reason why four out of the nine songs are covers. I also feel that with those two, even though they are covers, we really, really made them our own. I least I think so.

Glen: No. Well, I shouldn’t say that because there were a few pieces that were left on the side, yes there was. But we didn’t have anything resembling a complete song, where we said ‘Nah we don’t want to include this’. Everything that we completed, we liked. The true test when you’re doing something is after a while if it sticks with you and you still like it, then that’s a good sign. I think that was also part of the reason why it took two and half years to complete, because it wasn’t worked on for two and half years. It was all very sporadic and laid back. It was all done in between other things or whenever we felt like doing it. As the song progressed slowly, I spent a lot of time listening to them. Not only listening to the progress, but also to see if I still liked the tune. I had to see if it was going to grow on me or not. I still liked the songs, even though it was a different picture later on as the songs progressed and once I started to really hear the potential of the song. Regardless, at the end of the day I still liked the songs and I felt that we should include them.

Glen: Yeah it’s a beautiful piece.

Glen: That was done by one of the artists that Mike Varney recommended. We had a bunch of different ideas and I just really liked that image. I thought it was really cool and we just went with it.

Glen: Yeah, Paul came up with that idea. At first I wasn’t too sure, but then I thought ‘Yeah’ it actually does sum up the album, because that’s really what it is. It possesses a lot of those elements with the structured metal, but it has the fusion as well. I definitely think there are a lot of parallels between those two types of music.

Glen: Yeah, the next one won’t be too far down the road. We’re probably going to start the process all over again pretty soon. I don’t think it will take me two and half years to do the next album, just because with this one we started so slowly and we didn’t know where we were going. We knew we wanted to do something, but we didn’t know if it was going to be a complete album or if we were just going to have some fun recording a few songs or whatever. Now that everything is set in place and we have a direction, I think it should take us a lot less time to do another one. We’ll probably start soon and by the time we’re done it will probably be time to put out another one.

Glen: Yeah there’s a chance for sure. I don’t know what possibilities we have or what’s coming up, but I have a feeling we’ll be able to do some stuff.

Glen: I was referred by someone who was a fan of Eidolon. It was a guy who had been in contact with the webmaster from Megadeth.com. Dave was looking to put together a new version of the band I guess and this guy mentioned that he should check out this guy from Toronto. I guess he felt that I would be a good fit. That’s how it came about. I got an e-mail from him the morning after he had put in a word for me, and he said that the band was auditioning guitar and bass players. I wasn’t expecting too much to be honest. It was a Saturday morning and it was really early, but within a couple of days I was on the phone with all of them and it happened very, very quickly.

Glen: Well there was a little bit of pressure, but that was ok. Unfortunately it’s one of those bands where the fans for the most part are very critical of anybody except for Marty Freidman. Everybody has to sound like him, which is unfortunate because you’re not given the chance to express yourself. All they care about is that you sound like him. I love Marty, he’s a great player and I grew up listening to him and a lot of stuff from the Shrapnel label when it first came out. So that was a little bit of a drag. Not everybody was like that, but there was a lot of that surrounding the band. Aside from that it was fun; we had fun for the first little while anyway. Unfortunately towards the end things went really sour and that was it for me.

Glen: Just being able to see the world and being able to play some really cool shows with my brother. Like I said, in the beginning everybody was getting along and it was a brighter and less corrupt atmosphere, unlike what happened later.

Glen: Yeah it was. It was actually very, very tough. It was actually one of the toughest decisions that I’ve ever had to make in my life. You have to understand that being in a band like that with your brother isn’t something that happens everyday.

Glen: Yeah. The funny and sad thing was that after I left, everybody seemed to think that I had left music, I wouldn’t be playing music and that I was staying home to be with my family. Even though I had said in the press statement that was first put out, that I was unhappy where I was. I thought people would have been able to read between the lines, but unfortunately for whatever stupid reason they didn’t. So I had to make that a little clearer later on. Whatever, it’s an old story now and it’s part of the past. I had a good time, but I’m happier now doing what I’m doing without having to be in any kind of situation where I’d be miserable. I’m proud of the album and the guys that I’m working with. They’re stellar musicians, I’m doing what I want to do and that makes me happy. My brother is still in the band, he’s doing ok and as long as that’s cool and he’s doing fine then I’m happy.

Glen: When I started playing I was nine or maybe ten. That was when I first started tinkering. My first major influence when I started being able to put chords and songs together, was Tony Iommi. When I was ten or eleven I got into Sabbath. They were gods and nothing else existed in my world at the time and it was like that for years. I was all about Sabbath. Although there were other players that came into play afterwards that influenced me, initially it was Tony Iommi. After that it was countless players, from Kim Mitchell to Randy Rhodes and Vinnie Moore, all those guys.

Glen: It was disappointing that we didn’t get the real push from the labels that we were working with. That was the unfortunate thing. We weren’t really given a whole lot of opportunities to tour and we did a lot of albums. There’s some albums I’m proud of and other’s I’d have hard time listening to, but there’s stuff I can still listen to. It was very cool because all of the albums were recorded out of my studio, so I definitely have a lot of fond memories of what went into each album. Although the band didn't quite take off, we did develop a decent size fan base. It didn’t go quite as far as we were hoping, but it ended up leading to other things. If it wasn't for Eidolon and me joining King Diamond, we never would have done Megadeth. It never would have happened, so we wouldn't have been doing anything, at least not on that level anyway. It was a stepping stone and like I said, I have some fond memories of doing some of that stuff.