Dead Rhetoric: Do you miss going out on the road with your brother Glen with Act of Defiance after being involved with two bands with him?
Drover: No, because Glen doesn’t want to tour as much anymore. That’s one of the reasons that he left my previous band. He was missing his child at the time, and he just wasn’t enjoying being on the road. It wasn’t being on stage…that’s the fun part. But the other 22.5 hours that get you to going on stage – it’s taxing on some people. Not everyone is cut out to be on the road. It just ended up that he didn’t want to do it anymore. He didn’t want to travel that extensively. He made the decision to leave…to Glen’s credit, when he told me that, it was a big break between tours with that band, and we did a search, and we were the ones that came up with Chris Broderick. We were talking to people on the inside, and looking for people who would be a replacement, and Chris was on the top of our list. The next day…I didn’t even contact Chris. When Glen quit, he said he was resigning, but said to contact this guitar player [Chris Broderick]. He was in L.A. and I’m sure he was blindsided by it. There was no warning, he just got the phone call. Literally the next day he was down in San Diego and talking to the guys and he was in the band. It was that quick.
But getting back to Glen – he just didn’t want to tour much anymore. He still tours once in a while with Testament when Alex Skolnick has another commitment, they will call Glen. It’s the perfect back-up. He gets to go out on the road for a month or so here and there. He loves those guys, he loves the band, and that’s good enough for him. But he has his own studio and does all kinds of studio work and he stays quite busy with that. He seems to be much happier just staying at home and working on projects and in the studio.
Dead Rhetoric: A reoccurring theme seems to be just heavy metal. Do you realize that you are in metal for life when it gets to the point where you don’t know of any other way to do things?
Drover: I knew that when I was 13 years old. As soon as I heard Black Sabbath and Judas Priest, that was pretty much it for me. There was something that just went deep into my soul. It just connected with me on such an emotional…and just everything about it. I discovered rock – Queen and Rush, who are still some of my favorite bands to this day. But if you are talking about metal, once I heard Judas Priest, that was it for me. They are my favorite metal band. They always have been and they always will be. I love hundreds of metal bands.
I had already been playing music at the time; I just started playing drums and doing stuff with my brother in the basement. But that just struck a deep emotional chord, hearing Priest. All the other stuff, Maiden…Sabbath…then speed metal came in. But it all starts with Judas Priest for me. I just knew that I was going to be a lifer. Music is not something, for me, that 20 years down the road, I don’t like ‘that band’ anymore. I liked them when I was 15 but I don’t like them when I’m 25. I knew that would never change for me. In fact, it’s gotten worse – I’ve gotten heavier over the years. I like the heaviest shit you can ever imagine. I love brutal music, I just love it. I certainly have not softened with age, with what I like for metal.
Dead Rhetoric: Yeah, there’s always that stereotype that it’s just a teenage thing.
Drover: Yeah, I think that’s a crock of shit. You really aren’t a true fan of the band. If you are just a fan of the band because they are a cool band at the moment, on MTV in the ‘80s…I didn’t follow a band and then just ditch them two years later because MTV all of a sudden didn’t want to play metal anymore. It just made me like them even more and support them more. I was never a fairweather fan. I either liked it or I didn’t like it. It’s always been like that for me. I can’t really think of any band that I liked 20 years ago but now I hate. That’s not how it works with me. As soon as I heard Priest, I knew I would love metal for life. Within days, it’s like…”who’s Iron Maiden?” Killers came out in ’81. Jesus Christ, these guys are awesome! It goes on and on and on…then the quest begins. “Saxon, who is that?” It just never ended! It was just exploding at that time – 1980-1981. Shortly after that, speed metal came in and that was it. It just got heavier and heavier and I just went along with all of it…I still do.
Dead Rhetoric: You provide a ton of updates on your Facebook page. Is it important that fans know that you are the ones posting updates and not some random person on behalf of you?
Drover: I don’t know…for a band our size, because we are not a huge band. And we do post. I post on the band’s Facebook and my own social media. We aren’t in a position to be paying someone a yearly salary just to post some pictures and post whatever blog you have that day. More power to the bands that can do that. For us, if you have 10 minutes of time and you have a picture there, what’s the big deal about putting a description or posting a video from the road: “Hey, I’m in Denver today, come out to the show.” Just post it. For us, it’s not a big deal. We don’t do it every day. Sometimes you are busy and don’t’ have time to do stuff, but we try to stay on top of it for the most part.
The Internet is strange. You have to find that balance between posting too much and everyone going, “Oh Christ, here’s Drover posting the 9th thing of the day…hey I’m at Starbucks and that bullshit.” I try to find a balance to where I post enough but not too much. You can even see it in the numbers. If you post too much, and I’m sure Facebook controls that too – I wonder if they can see that you’re posting the same thing. For us, we have a new album come out – here’s where you can pre-order the album. If you post the same thing, can they see that and make the numbers go down? I’m not even really sure how that works. It’s confusing at times, but we try to stay on top of it, and be personable for the people who dig it. Not be too corporate or too fake about it, so people think that it’s not a moderator just putting up stupid shit that we don’t know about. It’s legit, if you go to our stuff that it’s coming from us.
Dead Rhetoric: Are you still holding up the position as Allegaeon’s cranky uncle?
Drover: [Laughs] Oh dear – that’s funny stuff. You know what’s funny about that dude, is that some people…again, I really don’t care about what anybody says, but you post shit like that – for me, I pick on Greg [Burgess] the most. I pick on all of them, but I really pick on Greg and the drummer Brandon [Park]. I say horrible things to them and stuff – just directly to them on Facebook. Of course, people see stuff and they are like, “Do you really want Greg to die? Do you really want [Brandon’s] foot to blow up?” It’s like Jesus Christ! It’s a fucking joke – we were on tour with them for five weeks. They are like my illegitimate children. If you know who I am, it’s just how I express myself to let them know that I like them. By giving them shit, it shows them that we are buds. It’s like fucking with your buddies, but now because of the Internet, you are able to post something on someone’s social media page. The peril of that someone can misconstrue what you are saying and put it on some stupid metal website: “Drover says he wants Greg’s hands to blow up!”
Even with that, of course I’ll message them privately and say all sorts of horrible things. I try to be a little careful to what I say that’s on Greg’s Facebook or Allegaeon’s social media. It’s unfortunate, but you’re seeing words on a website. Some people don’t catch the humor in it – you aren’t hearing the words and the dialect. Or you don’t know the two people’s relationship. It’s a weird thing, but all the stuff for me is done in humor. I love those guys – I’ll never tell them that, but I do. I give them shit at every turn – the whole band is quite good at that. Their old bass player, Corey [Archuleta], actually drove us around for one of our tour legs. We loved him a lot, but oh man…you can ask Greg, I bugged him the worst of all. He became available to drive us on one of the tour legs and the four of us just brutalized him verbally. Every day was an adventure in verbal torture. And those guys [Allegaeon] loved it! They weren’t on tour with us, but I would give them daily reports, and they were rolling.
Dead Rhetoric: Yeah, I thought that whole thing was funny from the get-go…
Drover: Sure, and it’s meant to be as such. But some idiots out there take things at face value. No, I don’t want his leg to explode while being attacked by a herd of possessed elk – it’s like relax, dude.
Dead Rhetoric: What’s next once the album comes out, I know you mentioned getting back on the road and touring heavily?
Drover: That’s the game plan. With any new release, we want to tour as much as we can and promote the record. Basically it’s just a cycle. Put a record out, promote it and tour for it, then you find a cut off date and then you do it all over again. For a new band like us, we can’t put out a new record once every 7 years. Put out the record, tour for it, write the next one, record it…do it all over again. It’s something that we are going to try to stay on track for and stick to the timeline. I think people’s attention spans now are a lot shorter, with the nonstop barrage of stuff coming out all the time. If you blink one time too many, you’ll miss the boat on certain things. We don’t want to take too long between records; it’s not a good thing for a new band like us.
We like to create and write music anyway. With every record we put out, there’s more and more songs to choose from. That’s something I’m looking for as well – we don’t just have one album to play anymore…now we have two, and I’m excited about that. We have that old school mentality where you have to go out there and grind it out and do the legwork…get in people’s faces in the live situation and hopefully they walk away thinking the band was really good and that they’ll want to support the band. You hope it grows from there – like it used to. It’s the only thing you can’t steal anymore – you can’t steal a live show. You’ve got to be there. It’s an important thing, in my opinion, being a live band and that’s what we are.
Dead Rhetoric: That’s very true, I haven’t heard anybody say it that exact way before.
Drover: I’m old school man, I’ve been around the block a couple times. There was no other option back in the day. If you are on a label, you put out a record and you toured. That’s how the band generates income, it’s how the record company recoups the money they invested…it’s all part of that machine. For us, it’s still a really important thing. Because if you don’t [tour], then you are a project. That’s how I view it. You put out a record and you don’t tour…why wouldn’t you tour? Again, I’m not douching it; there’s nothing wrong with that – more power to you if you can put out 10 different projects, that’s fantastic. But that’s the difference between a project and a real band. A real band goes out and supports their product with tours.