Ik kan mij nog heel levendig voor de geest halen toen ik in 1990 ‘Sanity Obscure’ had gekocht op basis van een recensie in Aardschok. Er werd geëxperimenteerd met klassieke instrumenten, en gezien het feit dat ik helemaal lijp was van Celtic Frost, had ik dus complete ‘Into The Pandemonium’ scenario’s afgespeeld. Het bleek echter om één track te gaan waarin geëxperimenteerd werd, maar het was een goede kennismaking met een hele sterke band, namelijk Believer. Hoewel ik daarna nooit meer echt iets van deze band beluisterd heb (hoewel ik nu toch op jacht ga naar ‘Dimensions’), was ik aangenaam verrast om het album ‘Gabriel’ te horen. Believer laat hier een nog bruter en donkerder geluid horen dan ik van ze gewend was. En eigenlijk ben ik het niet meer met mijn recensie eens, omdat het album sindsdien zoveel gegroeid is, dat ik het eigenlijk zou moeten herschrijven. Maar goed, ik laat mijn mening staan, misschien dien ik over een paar maanden eens een recensie in voor dit album waarin ik mijn uiteindelijke mening over dit album zal geven: klassieker in spe? Of toch een zeperd? Ik gok op het eerste, want ‘Gabriel’ staat nog steeds op mijn mp3-speler, en dat wil heel wat zeggen: ik ben van die muziek gaan houden. En dan is het ontzettend gaaf om van zanger/gitarist Kurt Bachman en keyboard specialist Jeff King te horen wat er zich allemaal achter de schermen heeft afgespeeld, wat geleid heeft tot ‘Gabriel’. Geen comeback album, maar wel ontzettend sterk!
Hello Believer! Back again from Hiatus! And I really liked the album, give or take a track that didn’t quite respond with me, but the final result is a return to sounds I thought that were extinct! How do you look back on the recording sessions of ‘Gabriel’ and do you consider this your darkest work up to date? Kurt: I think some of the chord progressions we landed on make it a bit dark sounding but we never set out to make it that way. I would have to revisit the other records to make a direct comparison, but we do like the darker sound presently.
Jeff: A lot of thought went into the recording process and the ‘Gabriel’ project as a whole before we even started getting sounds. Several guiding principles established at the beginning of the process helped to shape the outcome. For example, there was no looking at ‘Gabriel’ as a comeback album. Obviously we did not want to alienate any fans, but Kurt and Joey were interested in exploring new creative ideas and did not want to settle for retracing territory they had previously explored, such as using symphonic arrangements. Also, early on we decided to record and mix the album ourselves at Joey’s studio. This created some logistical nightmares to overcome but helped to provide the physical isolation from other people and the scheduling freedom needed in order to achieve the technical and artistic goals we were going for.
The only album by you I know is ‘Sanity Obscure’, and it still remains a favourite of mine. But before that you released an album called ‘Extraction From Mortality’. In what way does ‘Extraction From Mortality’ differ from ‘Sanity Obscure’? Kurt: ‘Sanity’ was a bit more technical where ‘Extraction’ was more straightforward thrash and a bit raw. We started to experiment more on ‘Sanity’ with entire songs such as ‘Dies Irae’ and ‘Like a Song’. We hope that when people listen to each record in succession, they will notice a growing maturity in our song writing and production.
The track ‘Dies Irae (Day Of Wrath)’ is my absolute favourite song of ‘Sanity Obscure’, and I sincerely hoped that you would write a full album of this kind of music. Also when I start looking on YouTube, I found a lot of people in support of this song. Has this ever haunted you along your career? Kurt: We love ‘Dies Irae’ also, however we feel it should stand on its own. We took the opera/string stuff to the next level on ‘Dimensions’, so as always we had to go in a slightly different direction with ‘Gabriel’.
After that you released ‘Dimensions’ and after that album Believer disappeared from the scene. Kurt stated in an interview that he wanted to go back to his studies in medical science and Joey stood ground in the music industry. Now science and music are two entire different things. What made Kurt decide to go back to his former love ‘Believer’? Kurt: To me science and music are very similar and I think this is why many scientists are musicians (Einstein for instance played violin). They both focus on the creative and collaborative process and this is the main reason I love them both. I relocated near our studio and Joey, which gave us the opportunity to start writing again. I am very fortunate at this point in my life that I can do both science and music. For me, they feed off one another.
Your back catalogue has been re-released by Metal Mind Productions from Poland. Are you satisfied with the way they released your previous albums? Kurt: The Metal Mind re-releases are the only versions Joey and I were directly involved with and we are quite happy with the way they turned out. We had a great time remembering the recording of these albums and writing the liner notes. Hopefully at some point Roadrunner will release these for digital download.
The First thing that came to mind when I started listening to ‘Gabriel’ was that the music of especially ‘Medwton’ reminded me a lot of old Pestilence. Have you been listening a lot to Pestilence, knowing that you have toured with them in the past? Kurt: That is a great compliment, however we were not listening to Pestilence at the time. I think there are a few bands that reside in a similar dimension and end up thinking and writing in a similar style. I’m sure that Pestilence and Believer have many of the same musical influences also.
One thing that doesn’t have changed is your belief. You guys are Christians, and you stand by your beliefs. Did the fact that you professed your faith through your music been a barrier to connect to a mainstream audience? Kurt: It’s possible that our approach has caused more barriers with the Christian audience. (Laughs) I think in general people understand we’ve never attempted to whore out our musical talents to push religious ideas. We’ve always tried to write the best music we can, write and give ourselves the freedom to talk about whatever happens to be on our minds, whether it’s spiritual things, science or the environment. We are uncomfortable with genre labels and feel that critics should judge us on the merits of the music alone.
Jeff: At the end of the day, no matter what you write about it’s still entertainment and people will take from it what they will.
When being confronted with Christianity, a lot of metal fans immediately think of Stryper, but when we listen to Believer, you guys are not even close to the sound of Stryper. Have there ever been comparisons with Stryper just because of the lyrical content? Or were people objective enough to recognize real thrashers from Posers (pun intended!)? Kurt: This is a perfect example why we do not want to be lumped into a certain category or genre. We have not been compared to many bands especially Stryper. We play an entirely different form of heavy music. Most of the comparisons have been with Pestilence, Voivod, Destruction or Kreator.
Two things were kind of out of place in my opinion: the reggae piece in ‘A Moment In Prime’ and the cool jazz thing in ‘Stoned’. Why did you choose for such pieces in your music? Kurt: Believe it or not but that is actually a compliment to us. We want to take the listener outside their comfort zone every once in awhile. It keeps things musically interesting and exposes people to unique and classic styles of music.
Jeff: For the end of ‘Moment in Prime’ we had this concept of music being played in a “Sad Clown Bar”. Imagine a bunch of depressed clowns with smeared make-up moping around a bar. One of them is passed out on the miniature carousel in the corner, just going around and around. That’s the type of mood or imagery we were going for. We wanted to work with Scott Laird on something and have a little fun in the process.
Another outstanding track is ‘Shut Out The Sun’, which actually reminds me a lot of the eighties, yet you have a sound that spells ‘New Millennium’ all over the place. Do you think that the eighties style of writing and the modern sound could appeal to a new audience? Or are you hitting on getting the old fans back? Jeff: Until we had a name for ‘Shut Out the Sun’, we referred to it with the title of a Journey song, so I guess the nod toward the eighties and the more accessible song structure wasn’t considered a bad thing. What makes this song unique is that Kurt is actually using his singing voice in the choruses. This is something he wanted to do on a song and we finally found the right place for it.
Believer has not forgotten that you guys liked to experiment back in the days. The aforementioned ‘Dies Irae’ was an excellent example of that, but on this album you present us with ‘Nonsense Mediated Decay’. Could you explain this track some more? Jeff: Early on there was talk about doing an instrumental number. We knew that we wanted it to have several different sections and that we wanted to just have fun with it by using strange sounds and arrangements that we wouldn’t use in a normal song. The key to understanding it is to listen with a sense of humour. Very early on Kurt, Joey and I got together to jam on some ideas as a way to experiment with the addition of keyboards to the band. Most of those found their way into this song. Elton Nestler (bass/programming) played a huge role in the creation of ‘Nonsense Mediated Decay’ even though his work began after all the music had been recorded. He connected us with John Boden from shocktotem.com who wrote and narrated the first person alien abduction account. Many people believe we sampled this from an old movie, but the truth is that John wrote it specifically for that piece of music and made it fit the allotted time. John recorded his story idea on a cheap hand-held voice recorder and sent it to Elton in order to get our feedback. We liked the sound of it so much that we used it as is, recording it directly from John’s voice recorder. John’s son, Alexander also helped out and is heard in several places on the track – also from John’s voice recorder. Elton also spent a lot of time auditioning and creating samples to use within and between various sections of the song at a time when most of us were feeling pretty burnt out on the project.
On my promo copy there are three undisclosed extra tracks that kind of remind me of ‘Nonsense Mediated Decay’. Is this a mistake in the promo-copy and do these three songs belong to ‘Nonsense Mediated Decay’, or are those there on purpose? Jeff: I’m glad you asked this question because it gives us an opportunity to clear this up. Our original intention was for ‘NMD’ to be the last official track on the album and then to have three hidden tracks. It wasn’t until the album and artwork had already been submitted to Metal Blade that we realized you can’t have hidden tracks in this day and age because the digital download sites list everything. So when the track listing was released and preorders began there were rumours floating around about different versions of the album because some places listed 13 tracks, others 10. To be clear, there is only one version of the CD. It has 13 tracks. The last official song is Nonsense Mediated Decay. The other three tracks are there just for fun – originally intended to be hidden tracks.
The artwork of ‘Gabriel’ is astonishing, and reminds me a lot of the works of H.R. Giger, especially the painting ‘Li’ (1974). Was Giger a reference point in your cover art, or do you have an entire other philosophy regarding the front cover? Kurt: The artist, Michael (Roz) Rosner of Eye Level Studio, is influenced by Giger so this comes through in his art. We discussed concepts for an entire year and Roz just nailed it in the end. He is a very talented guy and we just let him do what he does best. Only the Believer logo and ‘Gabriel’ text are computer generated. That is a real model wearing real paint and photographed under UV light. We love the cover but there is also a 16 page booklet with the CD that has all the lyrics and many other incredible images from the same photo shoot. We feel the artwork really fits with the music and has so much depth and technicality.
How did you end up at Metal Blade records? Kurt: We invited Howard Jones from Killswitch Engage to perform some guest vocals on “The Brave”. Once he heard the record, he asked if we would be interested in releasing the record through his imprint (Cesspool Recordings) via Metal Blade. We have been very happy with Metal Blade and look forward to doing more records with them and Howard.
I guess that the next step for Believer will be touring. Are there any plans yet and are there also plans to cross over to Europe? Kurt: We are rehearsing to play live now. There are no extended tour plans, but we will do some mini-tours and hopefully get to Europe. Much of this will depend on how well the record sells so if you want to see us live, please purchase the CD!
Final question: in Holland we celebrate the Darwin year: we remember that Charles Darwin was born two hundred years ago and that his main work “The Origin Of Species” was published a hundred and fifty years ago. It has lead to a debate between creationists and evolutionists which reminds more of a trench war than a discussion. Now with Kurt being a medical expert, but also a Christian, I would like to know if you see a possibility of both viewpoints coming together? Catholic scientists like Teilhard de Chardin have tried to bring evolution into the tale of creation. Is that something that you consider possible, or is it plain blasphemy? Kurt: To me, there is no reason to separate evolution and creation. I see evolution everyday in the lab so it is a very real thing for me. I’m a cancer researcher and I see cancers mutate and evolve into untreatable killing machines. In my opinion, evolution is just a process of creation. Other than that, I really don’t pay a lot of attention to what I consider a ridiculous debate.
Jeff: I have an interest in the philosophy of science but also find this debate to be pointless. At this time, natural selection and evolution provide us with the best framework for understanding the origins of all life. Whether or not you believe in God as the “first cause”, the preponderance of the evidence points to natural selection as the mechanism that drives the evolution of all life forms. For people who have unquestioningly accepted the ideas of “Creation Science” or the Intelligent Design movement, entertaining this possibility can be very unsettling. However, it is never blasphemous to pursue the truth, and the pursuit of truth requires the willingness to challenge your assumptions and lay aside preconceived notions when faced with contrary evidence.
Thank you very much for this interview, and you are on my top ten list of bands I need to see! Kurt and Jeff: Thank you for doing this interview with us. We greatly appreciate your support and hope that people enjoy the record. Listen with an open mind. Cheers!
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