Back in January, former Megadeth guitarist Glen Drover offered a look inside his solo debut, Metalusion, which had just been completed. The record has since been released and received unexpectedly glowing reviews. Not that odds were in favour of Drover releasing something stale and sub- par, but smart money was on a large portion of his Megadeth-bred fans being disappointed that Metalusion isn’t the full-on rip-yer-face-off metal shred record they were expecting. All in spite of Drover's warnings it wouldn’t be.

“A few people have made comments about that,” Drover agrees, “but it hasn’t been as common as you might expect. But, in my opinion… do we really, really need another album like that? There’s so much of that out there and it’s all great stuff, but for me to do a full blown instrumental metal record with solos every five seconds, it gets boring for me after five minutes, never mind 50 minutes of it. With all due respect to the guys that are doing that stuff, it’s cool, but it’s just too much for me. With that kind of thing I almost start asking where the vocals are.”
“I listen to instrumental stuff as much as I listen to music with vocals. Me and Shawn (Drover / Megadeth drummer) did the instrumental stuff way back in the early ‘90s when we were starting to get the Eidolon thing rolling. We just had a four track, a drum machine, some guitar gear, and we did the best we could, and it turned into a metal band with vocals. This time out, I just wanted to do an instrumental album properly.”

Defining “properly” as not boring the masses to tears with bars upon bars of “need more frets!” wankery.

“You’ve got to be really careful with instrumental stuff. Trying to hold the listener’s attention without vocals isn’t an easy thing to do. When you’re doing this kind of music you have to make it colourful. You can’t restrict yourself to one style. My tones are still there, so it’s not like I’m playing country music (laughs), but there are other things that we’ve embraced on the album as well, and I think that’s what keeps people’s attention.”

Along with the array of styles that are woven through Metalusion – ‘70s prog, jazz, metal, classical guitar – the album comes off as strikingly organic in spirit of classic Saga or Max Webster (see ‘Frozen Dream’). Quite the accomplishment given the album was put together long distance, with Drover assembling the parts in his home studio as they landed in his mailbox.

“None of the players were with me (laughs). The drums were recorded in two studios in Winnipeg, the bass was recorded there, Jim’s keys were all recorded in North York, my stuff was recorded at my studio. All the guest players – Jeff Loomis (ex-Nevermore), Vinnie Moore (UFO), Chris Poland (OHM / ex-Megadeth), Steve Smyth (ex-Vicious Rumors / Dragonlord) – did their stuff in their own studio set-ups. The trick is to bring all the stuff together and make it sound like everybody was in the same room recording at the same time.”

“One of the things I’m most proud of on this album is that there’s no trickery,” he continues “As you know, there’s a lot of trickery that goes on these days with auto-tuning vocals, tweaking the guitars and drums. There’s nothing like that on Metalusion. It’s just really good musicianship; all the guys are great players and we just took our time doing it. We’re really happy about the fact we did it the old school way. It’s cool that people are able to construct songs and make music using these computer programs that are out there, but to have the drummer actually playing all the parts and getting the best performance possible put to tape, for example, that’s the best.”

Of the 10 tracks featured on Metalusion, Drover opted to do five cover tracks: Al Dimeola’s ‘Egyptian Danza’, two pieces by violinist and jazz composer Jean-Luc Ponty (‘Don’t Let The World Pass You By’, ‘Mirage’), and a pair of Frank Zappa classics, ‘The Purple Lagoon’ and ‘Filthy Habits’. Drover agrees that playing covers straight can be a bore, so he and his bandmates shot for a balance between remaining faithful to the originals and creative license.

“We went in with the intention of doing the covers properly in terms of construction; all the rhythm stuff. And then the leads… on the Ponty track ‘Mirage’ I kept the intro lead the same because I really love that part. A lot of the stuff that’s on the record, though, whether it’s me or one of the guest guitarists or Jim (Gilmour/keys), we just went by feel and did our own thing rather than trying to copy the original. I guess we tried to make more modern, harder versions of those songs.”
“Also, we wanted to make sure the songs didn’t all sound the same. That’s another thing I’m really happy about, that we were able to make the tracks sound different yet make the album cohesive so the tracks all sounded like they belonged together. Even the covers being alongside the originals sound like a perfect match. It’s funny, because sometimes when I listen to the album I don’t even think of the cover tracks as being covers because of the flow (laughs). It all fits together.”
“The album was actually supposed to be nine tracks,” Drover adds. “The last tracks, the Frank Zappa tunes, were a medley I did. So, the songs that are listed nine and 10 are really supposed to be one track, but we weren’t able to get permission to do the medley. We had to split it up so that the tracks are individual in order to get all the rights so we could release it. But, if you listen to it there’s no gap, it’s all one track.”

As for bringing guest players on board, Drover confirms that at no time did he put on a director’s hat.

“I’m pretty loose that way,” says Drover. “I just sent Jeff a piece of the song where I wanted him to solo. I may have had my solo on the track, or just a dummy solo, so he could feed off of what I’d done. Those guest spots are trade-offs mostly, with me and one of the guys going back and forth. It wasn’t a case of me saying ‘Play this like this…’ and there wasn’t one piece that I got back where I thought that things should be changed or altered. As long as it fits and it sounds like it belongs, I’m good.”

The next step for Drover is to bring Metalusion to the people, a venture that is bound to pay off given that the music could be easily presented in any number of settings, from metal club to conservatory.

“It’s got to be the right billing. We’re going to shoot a video, and we’re gung ho to get out there and play live. We’re travelling towards that possibility. It’s got to be the right kind of bill or place. There are a lot of guys out there touring with instrumental these days, probably more than there were 10 years ago. I think touring with the Alex Skolnick Trio would be really cool, for example. It would be an awesome thing to do. In any case, I’m sure something is going to come our way sooner or later.”