The BELIEVER album 'Extraction From Mortality' extracted a response from the Cross Rhythms reviewer "has to be the best Christian thrash LP so far". Doug Van Pelt spoke to the band's leader Kurt Bachman.

Doug: How do you guys write material? What's the process you go through?

Kurt: "Well, what we usually do is the guitar players, Dave and I, will come up with a riff. Like, Dave will usually show me a riff and Joey and I will sit down for a couple of nights. I'll play the riffs and Joey will work on a beat for 'em. Joey basically arranges the songs. Sometimes he gets song ideas in his head that he'll sing to me, and I'll play it. After the verse part and the chorus parts are written, we'll go about writing the lyrics.

There was some time where Joey and I would take one or two hours just to get a beat for a song. That makes us feel pretty good, that we were taking our time writing the music. We were careful to get the music to where we wanted it to be. We didn't want to be over technical, simply because we didn't want to totally change our style. We wanted to progress to the point where it is technical. Onto the next album...I don't know. It could be sort of jazz/thrash or something, (laughter)"

Doug: Have you guys made any money at music?

Kurt: "Uh, yeah, we have. I mean, right now we aren't full-time yet; which we don't really want to be at this point. We want to wait a little more, until our albums get more circulated. Plus the Road Racer deal, you know, that should push us out the door as far as secular and Christian stores, we should be hitting every store. Who knows what the Lord has in store for us in the future. We don't really care, actually. It's on His shoulders. The money thing..it's like, we're definitely not in it for the money. I mean, we're a Christian thrash band. There's actually not too much money, but we feel called to do that, 'cause we feel like that area hasn't been hit, especially in the secular realm. As far as the money scene, you know, we get by, and that's all we ask.

Hopefully some day we'll be able to support a family and make it our living. That would be great, but it's whatever He wants. Any money we've seen so far has come from doing shows and selling merchandise at the show, things like that."

Doug: Do you have any raging new T-shirts in mind?

Kurt: "Well, there's like two or three artists that are kind of like in competition that want to do stuff for T-shirts. They're really good too, so we're gonna wait and see. The album's due out in January. We're thinking they should be full-colour Metallica-type T-shirts. We're gonna wait and see who will put up the money for the shirts and stuff."

Doug: Who else does Road Racer distribute?

Kurt: "King Diamond, Sepultura, Annihilator, Obituary, and more bands that are kind of underground."

Doug: How did the Road Racer thing come about?

Kurt: "Doug sent 'em a demo tape before 'Extraction' even came out. He sent 'em out to Atlantic and Road Racer and a couple of other labels. We didn't hear anything, but Monty Conner, the A&R guy from Road Racer, heard it and really liked it. He wanted to sign us before Extraction came out, but he lost all the information with the tape (which goes to show you bands: always put a contact name and phone number on the tape shell itself-ed). Then, when the album came out and stuff, about six months later, he called a Christian radio station and they put him in touch with Doug Mann. That's kind of how the whole thing got started. There's rumours that they might put 'Extraction' out later too."

Doug: How do you guys keep your chops up?

Kurt: "Well, we listen to a lot of stuff. We feel its' really important to listen to the bands that we feel we're in competition with, you know, like Kreator, Destruction, Watchtower, and bands that basically, you know, pretty much blow us away musically. They're ultra-technical and that makes us wanna gain more knowledge, so that people will wanna hear our message, also.