Ex-MEGADETH guitarist Glen Drover has contacted BW&BK; with the following update:

"I have just opened up two new days for guitar lessons; Mondays and Wednesdays. As of January 1st I will be teaching full time at the legendary Metalworks Studios music production school in Toronto .Until then, I'm going to do a summer special for lessons. Serious inquires can contact me at gdlessons@gmail.com."

BW&BK; scribe Carl begai recently caught up with Drover to discuss his new solo album, Metalusion. An excerpt from the story is available below:

“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.”

Go to this location for the complete interview.