There are long goodbyes, and then there is Megadeth’s retirement from the music industry. A final album and tour by the thrash metal pioneers was announced last August, with an AI-assisted video and a written statement that offered some classic grandstanding on the part of frontman and sole original member Dave Mustaine. Never a man to hide his light under a bushel, he equated Megadeth’s decision to quit with a global catastrophe (“some say this is the end of times”) and suggested that the US band “changed the world”.
Their decision to quit makes sense, given the state of Mustaine’s health. Having conquered throat cancer and radial neuropathy, he’s now suffering from arthritis and something called Dupuytren’s contracture – a thickening of tissue under the skin that causes the fingers to bend, commonly known as the suitably metal-sounding Viking disease – both of which impede his ability to play guitar. The call to end the band was made during the recording of their self-titled 17th studio album. But then three months later Mustaine announced that the farewell dates announced were only the beginning. The tour is scheduled to last “easily … three to five years”. So there seems every chance that Megadeth will still be bidding the world adieu in the next decade.
Still, there is a definite sense of finality to this new music. Rather than a full-blooded return to the genre their early albums helped birth, it effectively offers listeners a career-summarising redux. Some tracks certainly underline their position as thrash metal progenitors, most notably the flatly superb opener Tipping Point, as well as Made to Kill and Let There Be Shred. The latter would be completely preposterous were it not musically potent enough to make up for the lyrics “on the day I was born, a guitar in my hand, the earth started rumbling a thunderous command … let there be shred!” (There are also images of fingers combusting, guitars squealing in delight as they’re beaten to death, pretenders being destroyed, etc.)
On I Don’t Care, you get the punkish leanings that led Megadeth to cover Anarchy in the UK in 1988. More surprisingly, there are tracks rooted in the more melodic style the band controversially pursued in the mid-to-late 90s. If there’s a certain screw-you bullishness about this – 1997’s Cryptic Writings and 1999’s Risk seldom rank high among Megadeth fans’ favourite albums – there’s also a sense of Mustaine underlining that he’s actually pretty good at turning his attentions towards the radio-friendly, regardless of what he’s really known for: Puppet Parade in particular is really well written.
All of this is performed with the kind of technical precision for which Megadeth have long been famed: whatever one makes of the band’s constant lineup changes – the headcount of former members stands at 28 – contemporary guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari fits the band’s approach perfectly. But there are problems. The second half of the album noticeably lags, as if its career-summarising approach stretches to reminding listeners of the declining inspiration that’s haunted Megadeth’s fair-to-middling recent releases: Obey the Call is musically boring and laden with lyrics about ghostly puppetmasters controlling the world’s evils, reflecting Mustaine’s increasingly cranky and conspiracy-driven worldview, appearances on Infowars and all. He ends with The Final Note, which can’t work out whether it’s intent on tugging at longstanding fans’ heartstrings – “the final curtain falls, a quiet end to it all, now it’s just memories” – or heading off into retirement with middle finger aloft: “My last will, my final testament … my sneer.”
But it isn’t his final sneer. That comes with a bonus track in which Megadeth take on Ride the Lightning, one of a handful of Metallica songs that Mustaine contributed to before being unceremoniously ejected from the band in 1983. It seems a weird way to conclude things: why end an album intended to celebrate your band’s legacy by dredging up the spectre of your sacking from another band? It’s certainly not as if Megadeth’s version radically reinvents the song in “this is how it’s done” style, beyond sounding more polished and growling. Is it a matter of underlining his claimed ownership over some of Metallica’s early material? Or simply for the purpose of grabbing extra attention for Megadeth’s final album? But then, Dave Mustaine has rarely needed much prompting to pick at the subject of being ousted from Metallica over the intervening 40-plus years. If nothing else, bringing it up one last time is very on brand, as is the rest of Megadeth, good and bad.
This week Alexis listened to
Kavari – Iron Veins
New Year cobwebs instantly blown away by the first track from Glasgow producer Kavari’s forthcoming EP: trace elements of old school hardcore, mid-90s Aphex Twin, industrial, but a finished product all her own.