KISSFAQ.com's Tim McPhate has issued an interview with former VINNIE VINCENT INVASION drummer Bobby Rock. The following is an excerpt:

Q: The drum sound on the debut Invasion album is certainly bombastic. We've heard about the lengths Vinnie went to with his guitars; was there special attention given to the drums? How was your setup approached?

A: "Special attention to recording the drums? You might say that! We did the record at Baby-O Studios in Hollywood, which was on the second floor of this historic old building. On the first floor was a gutted old theater, which had been closed off to the public for some time. There was a big stage in there and, in fact, it was the same place where VAN HALEN filmed their 'Jump' video. But it looked like not one person had set foot in there since. Nonetheless, as you might imagine, it sounded incredible down there... big, open, roomy...the kind of place where every drummer dreams of recording.

So we had the drums set up on the stage, then Dana and the engineer, Mikey Davis, arranged to have various baffles and a bunch of different mics strategically placed all over the theater, in addition to all the close mics, of course. All the cables were then fed up into the control room, and a second set of mic feeds was sent to yet another studio in the place, where my live drums were blasted through a fairly loud PA system... which was also being recorded. So we had close mics, killer room mics around the theater, AND this live concert PA vibe - all hitting tape. And when you blended these three things together, along with all the latest, greatest outboard gear of the time, it sounded like the end of the fucking world, let me tell you.

The logistics for me recording were a bitch, though. There was a small "cat-walk" set up for my monkey ass to crawl back and forth between the theater down below and the main studio above. They also had a video camera on me so they could see what I was doing. It was a bizarre way to record tracks, as you might imagine. It was very isolating, because I had no idea what they were thinking up there between takes, since I couldn't see anything, and I obviously couldn't hear anything until they hit the talkback. Plus, it would get chilly as a motherfucker down there at night, which is when we did most of our recording.

The original drum tracks, as we recorded them, sounded insane, especially with all that room ambience. But here's the sad irony: After all we went through, something was lost in the drum sound somewhere along the way. I don't know if it had to do with all of the competing frequencies or overall master levels of all those rhythm guitar tracks, or how the record was ultimately mixed, or what. But if you think they sounded good on the record, you should've heard what was coming back at us during basic tracking. It was unprecedented.

Read the complete interview here.