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An Interview with Joey Daub
by Mark Fields
Pennsylvania's technical metal pioneers Believer made its mark on metal by releasing 3 great albums between 1989 and 1993 before calling it a day. 15+ years down the road, it is great to see Believer back in action after such a lengthy hiatus. Believer's fourth release, Gabriel, was released recently on Metal Blade and has so far been very well received. GASPetc.com's resident Believer geek Mark Fields had the opportunity to speak with drummer Joey Daub about the past, present, and future of Believer...
Joey: Mark! It's been way too long, brother!
GASP: Hey Joe! Glad you remember me! I'm eager as a "fanboy" to get some answers on a few things and find out in general how you're doing.
Joey: I'm game.
GASP: The title Gabriel; could you elaborate on it a bit? Does it refer directly to the angel who announced the births of Jesus and John the Baptist, or maybe some other kind of reference to something else?
Joey: I'll just start by saying that it is what it is to the individual. Like Believer is in so many other instances, we want to just kind of throw it out there and really not give any concrete information about it in the sense that people will be like, "Oh, yeah! This is what it is. Oh, I know that; that's what it is," you know? It's more towards, 'It could be, or maybe not.' I think it's one of those things that we really want people to be able to personalize the record; so by just leaving it in the open and not having any preconceived notions we just kind of let it be in the 'just kind of out there' mode.
GASP: Fair enough. That kind of ties in with the next thing I'd like to touch upon: the lyrics on Gabriel. I was just discussing with a friend (Goz) that, compared to the first three albums, the lyrics on the new disc are pretty oblique. I can't really make heads or tails of a lot of it. Was that a conscious shift in your approach, or just a natural result of a 15-year hiatus since the last album?
Joey: (laughs) Well, actually I think the lyrics more or less deal with things that we were dealing with over the past 15 years or so; you know, personal experiences, other things we were interested in... Each song has, more or less, a different meaning to each one of us in the band, so we just kind of want to leave that up to the individual listener as well. It kind of keeps a little vague, but people can get what they think they want to get out of it; that's fine. It's one of those things not to give any preconceived notion of what's going on. Actually we've had a couple of people write into our MySpace and stuff asking, "Uh...can you explain what this song means?" and everything. No, use YOUR brain. We want YOU to come to a conclusion with it.
GASP: Well, I really tried using my brain to understand the first song, "Medwton." Does it question the role of armed resistance at the end of time? That's an ethical question I've been wrestling personally with for a while, now.
Joey: (long pause) Ahh...maybe!
GASP: Ah! There you go! HA! HA! HA! HA! Well, that's the only song so far...
Joey: ...that you could make heads or tails out of.
GASP: Yeah. I've only had the album for a few weeks, but that's the only song that I could take any personal meaning from.
Joey: And that's great that you did that, you know? That's an awesome personal vibe to yourself. And possibly to us. And possibly not.
GASP: (laughs) Moving on to matters of personal inspiration, a friend of mine was telling me how much he loved "Shadow of Death" from the first album and was wondering what factors moved you, back then, to write that type of song; and also, what inspires your creative process these days? The same things as back then? Now that you're 20 years older, maybe something totally different?
 Joey: I think there are things that inspired back then that still inspire us now. I think one of the biggest inspirations, musically and stuff, is the fact that Kurt (Bachman, vocals/guitar) and I can get together and still gel and create something that resembles something that we did 15 or 20 years ago. And you're right, we're obviously much older and--I would hope to think--much wiser; and we've come to view things in a totally different light, more aware of--for me, especially--politics, morality, and other things that were still floating around back in the day but not as pronounced, per se, as they are now in certain situations. Also, different things we've been listening to. I was a big-time metalhead--which I still am--but as you get older and you get children and everything else, you kind of need time just to wind down; and I've really dug back into my whole vibe of jazz, lots of Steely Dan, some old-school dance music stuff that I haven't listened to for quite a while...but I think there's definitely some of the same influences from the first album. And you know, with Kurt being a doctor and stuff now, too...I mean he was always a geek, but I think a lot more of his 'superior intelligence,' as I say it--because, you know, I'm pretty much just a hack...
GASP: (LAUGHS)
Joey: ...a lot of that kind of stuff has come out within the lyrics and within even the process of writing the songs for Gabriel.
GASP: What is the Morse code toward the end of the album on "Nonsense Mediated Decay" and the untitled tracks? Can you save me the colossal undertaking of deciphering that stuff myself?
Joey: No. (laughs)
GASP: Thanks, man...
Joey: But I'll tell you what; I'm sure you probably know that there are websites you can go to to figure some things out...
GASP: Well, I figured that you guys put something in Morse code deliberately...
Joey: (laughs) We wouldn't do something like that, would we?
GASP: (laughs) Oh, boy. I guess at some point it will involve rolling up my sleeves.
Joey: Some things change over 20 years and some things don't!
GASP: My understanding is that the first seeds of resuming work were planted somewhere around the time you and Kurt got together to discuss details of the Metal Mind reissues of your earlier albums?
Joey: Actually, it was before that. I had been playing drums for 10 years or so with this band Fountain Of Tears; and when we went to mix our disc, Jeff, the keyboardist of Fountain Of Tears who is obviously now the keyboardist and all-around crazy guy for Believer...Jeff and I had talked to Kurt about coming in and being an extra set of ears when we mixed the Fountain Of Tears. Kurt had come and sat in on the mixing with us and stuff, and we were just ping-ponging around some ideas of getting together and playing some more. We had actually gotten together, I think around 2005, just to hack around some ideas or something and that didn't really do much. Then, upon mixing the Fountain Of Tears disc we talked more and said, "Hey, let's just get together and come fresh and see what can happen." And, I'd say, probably around the end of 2006 or early 2007 we actually got together, sat down, and started playing for a little bit; and it was amazing. The chemistry came right back.
GASP: How soon before it became obvious that you should continue working toward an album's worth of songs? A couple of hours? A couple of tunes? More or less than that?
Joey: I think we pretty much knew after we put the serious faces on. I mean, we wanted to have fun, but we thought, "Hey, let's try to write something." And I think it just came so naturally that within writing half of the first song it was like, "Let's keep doing this and see what we can come up with!" Pretty much from then on the ideas were flying and stuff was getting laid down.
GASP: Did you maintain your thrash playing chops over the years? What about Kurt? Had he kept at it?
Joey: Kurt had been playing, but I wouldn't say he was full-out playing a lot over the past several years. I had been playing, obviously, with Fountain Of Tears and stuff. I think the first song that we wrote, if I'm not mistaken, was "Shut Out the Sun," so that wasn't too bad; but as we progressed and wrote faster stuff it was pretty brutal. It took us a while to get down and get up to speed. Right now, as we're rehearsing to do live stuff and everything, we're close but not quite on par yet. We have the speed, but when we're done we have our attending physicians and nurses that are beside us check our heart rates to make sure we're not going to keel over.
GASP: (laughs)
Joey: It's not quite that bad. It's definitely coming around, but it's taking some time to get it back. It's not like we were sloppy or anything; it's just that when we were done with a song, especially a quick song, we had to rest...shake out the hands, the feet...you know? But I can definitely say that the amazing picking hand of Kurt Bachman is back and ready to shred. He still amazes me after all these years.
GASP: I guess that makes him some kind of Renaissance man: curing cancer in the daytime, and...
Joey: (laughs) ...being a metal guy at night.
GASP: The Believer Chronicles is a project Kurt mentioned when I interviewed him around the time of Dimensions. He said it was something that you guys were interested in doing as an outlet for material that wouldn't otherwise be the right fit on a Believer album. Is that something that may yet see daylight, or is it an idea you've put to rest?
 Joey: We did record a handful of songs, maybe 3 or 4, and then with everything going on it just kind of fizzled; but I would definitely say that down the road, if we keep things moving along and have the time, it's definitely something we'd be interested in, for sure. Especially now that Jeff King is on board with the Believer stuff...he'd be super to have in on that, because Jeff and I are also working on kind of a rock fusion instrumental thing. We've been working on it for a while; but again, everything kind of gets put on hold when you have something "serious" going on.
GASP: Jeff came over from Fountain Of Tears to work with Believer; what about Elton (Nestler, bass and programming) and Kevin (Leaman, guitars)? How did they come to work with you?
Joey: Actually, they're both really good friends and they, as well as Jeff, were Believer fans. I've known both of those guys for a long time, and when Kurt and I were talking about getting things situated, putting a band together, and playing out for some shows and stuff, we thought, "Why wouldn't we just go and tap into some of our friends that play, see how it goes, and more or less have a good time with it?"
GASP: Speaking of your friends that play, it was nice that (former members) Jim Winters (guitar) and Scott Laird (violin) contributed to the album.
Joey: Yeah. We definitely wanted to try to keep them in there. It kind of fit with a lot of the guest appearances that were on there. It fit to get Jim back and get Scott to do something. We knew that we weren't going to do the orchestrated thing anymore, because we kind of feel that we took it to the point that we could and that it was time to do something else. At the same time, though, we wanted to have Scott be a little involved because he's been there from the beginning. Scott's been on Extraction, Sanity, Dimensions obviously, and he's a great player and a great friend.
GASP: During the creative process, what normally happens first? The music? Does anyone keep a notebook with lyrical ideas, or does lyrical inspiration stem in part from what's going on in the music?
Joey: We wrote the music first. I had some ideas for lyrics laying around, and Kurt had some, and Jeff had some. After we got the main body of the song, then we just kind of sat around with a bunch of the different lyrics that we had, felt the vibe of the song, and more or less put the lyrics we had to the songs, of the lyrics we had. The ones that we didn't have lyrics for, we made some demos of them and sat around and listened and kind of vibed on what the song was doing in order to come up with lyrics.
GASP: Stepping back to Dimensions again for a moment, I think it was on Sputnikmusic where the writer reviewing Gabriel was kind of glad you guys broke up when you did because, as he put it, after presenting "Trilogy of Knowledge" to listeners, "(W)here do you go from there besides up your own ass?"
Joey: Right, right! (laughs) I remember that review.
GASP: But yet, Dimensions is maybe my favorite metal album ever, for some of the 'drawbacks' he cited. The myriad of styles and sounds you somehow managed to knit together so cohesively...how did it happen that you reined in those energies and stripped things back down again to a somewhat more straightforward approach to your songs? Here and there on Gabriel is the experimental side reminiscent of Dimensions, but it's not nearly as pronounced.
Joey: Like I've said, I kind of look at our first 3 albums as the first Star Wars trilogy. Obviously I'm not comparing them in terms of greatness like that, but each one kind of grew a little more and a little more. With Extraction, we started out with a string intro thing; then on Sanity, we did a complete song; then on Dimensions we did the "Trilogy..." thing. But coming back, we wanted to incorporate a little bit of each of the previous records in there, as well as add kind of a modern feel, if you will, and add some things that have influenced us in the 15 years since, that were new, opposed to kind of re-hashing the same thing--touching different elements, but also trying to keep it not where people would say, "Here's Dimensions #2," or something like that.
GASP: If that was your plan, in my opinion you succeeded 100%. I do hear elements which might have been at home on each of the first 3 albums, but I can't point to anything and call it a straight-up re-hash. Prior to the release of Gabriel, you guys were describing the new songs as a "sick, insane cross between Tool, Voivod, NIN, and Destruction." It was kind of hard for me to imagine how that would actually sound, but your description makes perfect sense now that I've heard it for myself. It does have some of the old-school aggression, but the careful use of dynamics in all the right spots gives the material some breathing room and a maturity that many younger bands, including Believer's early efforts, don't normally achieve within the framework of straightforward, old-school aggression. Kudos to you for pulling it off the way you did here.
Joey: I really appreciate that, because that's what we were going to do; and I like how you just mentioned about giving the material some room to breathe, and also using dynamics and stuff. That was one thing that we really enjoyed by doing everything ourselves: that we could go for the dynamics and we could make it not sound like every other metal album that's out there now. Don't get me wrong. I'm not cutting on anything; it just seems like everything gets pushed to the limit now, with one balls-to-the-wall volume that just...goes. And by us trying to utilize dynamics and not crush your speakers or whatever, when we went in to master, to us it was really crucial to make sure that the dynamics weren't lost in the mastering. We didn't want to crank it as loud as we could and push it and print it; we wanted to get the volume up there, but keep the dynamics so that we could get what you were talking about, the feeling of how it kind of goes in and out and gives you a little bit of space.
GASP: On a quick mastering-related tangent, do you have any opinion on (Metallica's) Death Magnetic?
Joey: I'd have to agree with a majority of people out there saying that it was pushed so much that it kind of clips. The recording itself I think is nice, but within the mastering I think it just got squashed a little too much.
GASP: I think it got squashed a LOT too much and maybe had the worst clipping I've ever heard on a major label release.
Joey: It was kind of disappointing. It's one of those things where, I mean, I don't attempt to think that I know everything; but I just can't believe that it left the mastering facility after people listened to it, and it got OK'd.
GASP: That sums up pretty succinctly how some of the GASP Scallywagz feel about it, too.
 Joey: Well, yeah; and it's funny because what what we did was, we used the guy that we had used before for some other recordings--not Believer, but some other things--to master it. He's a really good mastering engineer, but we had a couple of different go-backs where we got it and we listened to it, and, "Ahh...nope, that isn't it; that's just not cool." And then we went back again. We did a few go-backs and then we decided to go and use Alan Douches at West Side Mastering and he did a fantastic job. I mean, it came out exactly the way that we wanted it to.
GASP: The album does sound really good. Your kick drum sounds really full, and the bass tone is nice and warm...
Joey: It sounds real.
GASP: It took me a few spins to get used to the guitar sound, which differs somewhat from your earlier albums; but it is really heavy and sits nicely in the mix. Overall it is a great-sounding recording.
Joey: Right. Well, thank you; I really appreciate that, and I'm sure all the other guys will, as well.
GASP: You mentioned that you were rehearsing for future live performances. Have you set any timeframe for yourselves as to when you'd like to resume live shows?
Joey: I would say sometime in the next few months. We're currently working right now...it's a bit more of a process at this point, just because what we are planning to do is perform everything live. By that, what I'm saying is that there will be no click tracks with any type of [sequencing]. Everything will be triggered real time, live, between Jeff, Kurt, and myself. Everybody kind of has multiple jobs, so rehearsal's actually been quite fun...a little hair-pulling, but quite fun. As you know, Kurt and I are very anal about what we do; so obviously it has to be point-on before we even get out there to bring it to a live situation, because we don't want to disappoint any of the fans that've stuck around and waited for us for 15 years. I'm thinking hopefully in the next few months or so we'll be out there. You can go to the Believer MySpace, or to the official website. We try to keep everything posted up there; so as we're getting closer to playing shows, or whatever, all the information will be up there.
GASP: One final thing. In some old interview you mentioned that you endorsed a variety of peanut-related snack products (peanut butter crackers, peanut M&M's, etc.), and on occasion some of your fans supposedly even sent packages of these to the band P.O. box. In light of the recent peanut/salmonella scare, are you still accepting this kind of donation or have you decided to endorse a different kind of snack food?
Joey: It's all good. It's still all good. If people do continue to do that again, please no tainted peanut butter. We would prefer they send nothing that would cause us harm or anything.
GASP: (laughs)
Joey: You know what, Mark? We're pretty much the same guys we were back then, except we're a little bit older and a little bit fatter, and...well, Kurt has no hair, and I have whatever hair I can hold onto. But I think that, too, is one of the great things that came out of this whole thing with Kurt and I getting back together again. He's the same Kurt that I remember picking up from school in my car to go jam when he was, like, 14. So, it's all good.
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