MEGADETH Drummer Talks Influences, Gear In New Video Interview

La Boite Noire conducted an interview with MEGADETH drummer Shawn Drover at this year's edition of the Hellfest festival, which took place June 15-17 in Clisson, France. You can now watch the chat below.

During a January 2012 interview with Legendary Rock Interviews, Drover was asked to recount the very unusual story of how he joined MEGADETH. "It was 2004 and my brother Glen was in the band as their guitar player," Shawn said. "They were in rehearsals for their tour and I was in contact with him every day and checking on him and stuff and seeing how things were going. The situation just came up where they didn't want Nick [Menza, former drummer] in the band anymore, so I came home and my brother got hold of me and said, You better sit down.' And I was like, 'Why? What's going on?' And Glen was like, 'Well, they want you on the next plane to come out here.' [laughs] This was six days before the first day of the tour, so to be honest with you, that was quite a shock, you know, and I was just like, 'Jesus, man,' because I was well aware of when the tour was starting. So I called my wife and filled her in real quick and I was on a plane bound for Arizona a few hours later to rehearse with the band. We rehearsed for four days, travelled the fifth day, and the sixth day was the first show of the tour. It was quite a daunting task, but looking back now, I probably wouldn't want to do it any other way. It was pretty cool and I really didn't have time to freak out or be nervous or anything like that. I was so focused on learning the songs that I didn't know yet, they had just put out 'The System Has Failed' and I hadn't heard a note of it at all because it was just released. I tried to learn and cram as much material as I could in those four days of rehearsal. The first show was in front of thousands of kids and was off the hook; it was a great show. It's funny, because for some reason, the barricades weren't up at that venue and the kids were jumping all over the stage and going crazy. I guess nobody remembered to, or whatever, so it turned into an old-school MEGADETH thrash show with kids stagediving and the whole bit, so I thought that was how it was going to be all the time, which was fine by me, you know, because I am definitely from that era. [laughs] Come to find out someone messed up and everyone was like, 'What happened to the barricade?' and I was like, 'Oh, OK….' [laughs] It was pretty funny and I have a lot of fond memories of that time. It was nerve-wracking, of course, but it was so exciting and I was just so focused on learning that it kind of all worked out."

MEGADETH was among the nominees for the 54th annual Grammy Awards, which was held on February 12 at Staples Center in Los Angeles. The band's tenth Grammy nomination was for its single "Public Enemy No. 1", off MEGADETH's latest album, "TH1RT3EN", which came out on November 1, 2011.

"Public Enemy No. 1" actually marked the second Grammy nomination for music from "TH1RT3EN", as the song "Sudden Death" was first unveiled in the 2010 video game "Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock" and received a "Best Metal Performance" nod.