If thrash metal musicians were subject to the rules of elite sportsmen and women, there’s a fair bet three of the world’s big four acts would be under high suspicion for having recently consumed mega volumes of performance enhancing supplements.
Guitar-slinging Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine would certainly be one in need of sample submission, considering the mind-blowing immense brilliance of his band’s most recent release, Dystopia.
In stores last Friday, the album is arguably the band’s finest work in at least a decade.
In thrash circles it follows fellow “big four” alumni Slayer’s stellar late 2015 release, Repentless, and precedes next month’s monster longplayer from Anthrax, For All Kings.
That of course only leaves one other member of the “big four” to impress with new material – Metallica - and that band’s work rate suggests an altogether different substance intake.
Only days before the album’s release, on which he was joined by bass buddy David Ellefson, and newcomers Kiko Loureiro (Angra) and drummer Chris Adler (on loan from Lamb Of God), Mustaine spoke to the Gazette.
He appreciated the compliments and offered some substance-free reasoning for the incredible new release.
"I can't speak for my brethren, but I thank you for myself,” Mustaine said. “I think having two new guys in the band is really cool.
“Sometimes you just kind of lose sight of the things that make you love something about a project and I know that I was really struggling at a time with my health - with my neck - and there were some decisions that were made when I was unable to make them and they just weren't kind of good for the band as a whole.
“You make these changes and you see that it’s the right thing to do and you start making the right changes. It takes a little while to get your act back in order. We feel right now that everything is just firing on all cylinders. New management. New label. New everything. It's just great.”
Dystopia was recorded in Nashville, produced by Mustaine and mixed by Josh Wilbur.
Mustaine said there was a great deal of excitement in the studio – perhaps enhanced a little by coffee intake.
“People would come to the studio and they'd be rolling in coffee - Kiko would come in and make a double latte, Chris would have a couple of coffees and David would already have had a couple and I would go and sneak a beer in the bathroom because I was like, ‘man, I don't want these guys to see how fricken’ wired I am right now’. If I were to have one sip of coffee I probably would have exploded.
“I was so fired up to have all this talent. Everybody knows David, but Kiko's a relatively unknown talent, and Chris … what he did with Lamb Of God and a lot of his other side projects that he's done has been great, but to have him work for me and have that kind of ability work for me, whether what we did together was better or worse than anything he's done with anybody else, I just knew that it was going to be really liberating for me to be able to go in there and just do what ever I wanted with somebody with this kind of talent. It reminded me a lot of when I went in with Vinnie Colaiuta [known for his work with Frank Zappa].”
Mustaine says the fact that Adler was, by his own admission, already a fan of Megadeth’s previous work, certainly made it easier when he took to the skins in the studio.
"It was exciting to know that we'd had that much of an influence on him,” Mustaine said. “It made it a lot easier to say, ‘why don't we do a part kind of like this song or on this part right here, think of that kind of pushing and pulling’ ... it's a lot easier when somebody has something they can picture in their mind's eye when you're working on music.
“I got to tell ya, I had so much fun working with Chris. There was one part in particular. We were recording the majority of stuff for pledgemusic.com and I'm just praying that we had this one clip, I think we do, but he was trying to do this one part, I had this one really crazy part that Gar [former drummer Gar Samuelson] could do, but it was one of those really weird kind of like pat your stomach and rub your head kind of things and I kept saying doing it like this and he couldn't do it and he was getting madder and madder and madder and I couldn't stop laughing, and he kept trying and he started swearing ... I started crying I was laughing so hard and I said, 'you've gotta stop', because I thought that I was going to have a heart attack. I couldn't breathe.
“He sat there and he couldn't hear what I was saying, but I could everything that he was saying. It was like, ‘shit, f**k, damn it, shit, goddamn it, shit’ and it was getting madder and madder and I'd never heard him swear the whole time and he started on a total friggin’ melt down.”
One of the most easily recognised differences between Dystopia and other recent Megadeth releases is the return of shredding guitars and dazzling solo fret play.
It is a release far closer to the vibe of Peace Sells and Rust In Peace than Endgame and Thirteen.
Baffling listeners with a slew of changes and copious lashings of technical brilliance isn’t necessarily in Mustaine’s mind when it comes to writing.
"I don't think it has to be that way,” he said. “I'm sure to you it seems that way because to me it seems that way sometimes too. I think at times too, ‘am I making this too difficult for the sake of being difficult and then I listen back to the part and it’s like, ‘well that part's a little wimpy, you need to beef it up a little Dave’, or I'll do a part and it will be like super heavy and it will be butted up against a melodic part and the opinion will be like, ‘wow, that part is so heavy and so brutal and so great but it’s not right next to that part’, and then you make up your mind - do you keep the melodic part and make that a chorus at some point or do you keep the brutal part and make that a bridge or a verse?
“For me that's the most fun part. I told Adler I had 200 song ideas in my drive and I don't think he believed me, but then he got to the studio and saw that and went, ‘man, you were serious, weren't you?’. I've got stuff back from So Far, So Good ... So What days.”
Mustaine agrees with the notion that Dystopia’s brilliance owes a great deal to he and his band mates not being afraid to be informed by the band’s back catalogue successes.
"Being able to look and see what our strong parts are and being able to draw from them without copying them; I think that's where most people blow it ... they either won't go back there because they don't know how to balance that line because they're afraid that they'll just blatantly copy it - I did have a little trepidation, I don't want to do the same song twice - but I also know that we've had several songs where we've done part two on it and gotten away with it, you know Return To Hangar is part two [of Hangar 18], and oddly enough people have said that Dystopia is Hangar 18 part three. No it’s not.”
Despite Dystopia being release number 15 in a career that started in 1983, Mustaine, 54, says nerves still creep in when it comes to preparing new material.
“It depends on what my behaviour has been like prior to a release,” he said. “If everything is great and people know that there's going to be something really good coming then there's a certain reward that comes from it and there's a certain pride that comes from it. If you make a bad decision and end up falling on your face and you're trying to win some people over, which has happened a couple of times in my career, where I've lost my job and I've had to win a couple of fans back over, that's a totally different feeling when you start winning again.
“I like to win no matter what, but I certainly like to make up for bad stuff that I've done in the past. That's what I like the most about right now, because there's a lot of people that bad stuff has happened to them over the course of Megadeth's career - the people we've worked with, the people who've got hurt - we get to see them again out on the road and say, ‘dude, what's happening, let's write or have a drink or something like that’.”
Those familiar with Mustaine’s Megadeth will be well aware of the man’s often confronting lyrical bent, regularly questioning aspects of humanity and the powers that be.
"The word play stuff sort of comes along easy because there's a lot of daydreaming that goes on in the course of the day,” Mustaine said. “I watch and read a lot of news stuff. I'll be out in public and I'll be listening to what other people are talking about - not so much being a professional eavesdropper, but when you're travelling in the course of the day you just can't help hearing what other people are talking about so listening to what the current commentary is from people; seeing what really is trending through lack of a better word.
“I think that's the stuff that keeps me curious. Also, what we see going on with the networks and stuff in the States is like, there's that huge question mark of: ‘is this really happening, is it all around, or is it all what they want us to think and none of this is real?’.”
Mustaine says he has always intended for his lyrics to serve as think-pieces for his listeners.
"I think that's one of the underlying things I've wanted from all of our records not just this one, is to think for yourself,” he said. “There have been a lot of people who don't agree with what I say and I think that they first off don't understand why I say the things that I say - I don't say things like this as the gospel according to Dave, I say things like, ‘hey check this out, don't take my word for it, see it for yourself’.
“Then there's other people that don't really know me and they just get on the bandwagon from the last band I was in [he was the original guitarist in Metallica] … and the people that hate me because of not being in that band anymore.
“There's a couple of tribes out there that don't like me just because it’s trendy to do that and they don't even know why they don't like me. You know a lot of the beliefs out there surrounding me … once people find out the truth around it, it’s actually pretty interesting stuff, which I think is really cool, you know the folklore with a lot of the things that have happened with Metallica and Megadeth. It's really super interesting shit and I love telling the story. A lot of times it will changes peoples perspective of me for the better, sometimes it doesn't - I don't really tell people the history to change their minds on stuff, but it is cool to see how things really started off and it is cool for people to see how our scene grew from being this little tiny band to what it is now.”
Speaking to people is something Mustaine is happy to do, fans in particular, and on most days you will find him doing so on twitter.
"It's fun,” he said. “I even talk to the trolls. The funny thing is for those little f**kers to being following me, to be wasting their time saying something to try and get me riled up, they're fans. In order to follow me, they've got to be fans.”
As well as celebrating Megadeth’s current place in the world, Mustaine is also playing the part of proud father.
His daughter Electra is on the verge of launching her debut single to the American country music market.
Surprisingly, it’s a cover of her old man’s song I Thought I Knew It All from Megadeth’s 1994 album Youthanasia.
Electra, who turns 18 on January 28, served as duet partner for Stryper frontman Michael Sweet on his cover of Neil Young’s Heart Of Gold on his last solo release, I’m Not Your Suicide.
"She's really remarkable and the great thing about it too is she didn't go telling everybody she's my kid or use her dad's name to open the door and get beer coupons and stuff like that,” said Mustaine.
“She's worked on her own and been really disciplined and paid all of her bills herself. She's done the mixing and mastering and directing of her video and I'm like, ‘wow kid. I'm really proud of you.”
