It has been, frankly, surreal to behold the reality of seeing Megadeth’s newest, and final self-titled studio album debut at number one on the Billboard 200 chart recently. I realize I’m just jumping right into things here, but consider it with me for a moment… it upheaves and closes the book on one of the longest running narratives within mainstream metal. A story that nearly every metalhead who has been passingly aware of the histories of both Megadeth and Dave Mustaine’s previous band Metallica has known about. Megadeth was always second fiddle, in popularity, sales, and even when they were having their moment in the sun with 1992’s Countdown to Extinction, it could only bow at number two on the Billboard Charts, unlike Metallica scoring their own first number one record a year prior with their self-titled black album. Maybe no one else is thinking this hard about something seemingly trivial like this, but for me, it feels like one part of a fitting send off for Megadeth, if indeed, this is the last album (and Mustaine’s comments in interviews seem like it very much will be). I say this because not only does it grant Mustaine an elusive career long ambition for his band, it does justice to the tenacity of Megadeth fans organizing in a concerted effort to make it happen. Now granted, I was only made aware of this campaign well after the album hit the top of the charts officially, but that’s more my own tardiness showing than a lack of the fan campaign’s efforts at awareness I’m sure.
My history with the band goes back to before I was even a metal fan, because it was via a poster of the cover art for Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying that I got my first impression of heavy metal imagery before I had even heard a single note of thrash metal. I detailed this story in the biographical piece I wrote a long time ago, because it was a singularly catalyzing moment for me, making my younger self aware that such stuff existed. Later on when I was becoming rapidly immersed in hard rock music and buying cassettes myself, it was quietly in my mind that heavy metal was a thing and was just a tiny jump to make. Thanks to a lack of anyone parental paying attention to my purchases, I was able to satisfy that spark of curiosity at what music this band’s provocative artwork was presenting, and a gateway began to be opened. It is an actual fact that I owned a Megadeth album on cassette before owning any Metallica album (that being Countdown to Extinction). Although in truth I had a hard time enjoying it until I got acclimated with Metallica, and went back to the Megadeth album when I learned that Mustaine was a former member thanks to some older metalhead in the neighborhood mentioning it off hand. That slight nudge that got me to go back and revisit that cassette may have been the pivotal moment between being a casual metal fan in passing, and the lifelong devotee that I am today.
Getting into the technicality and abrasiveness of Megadeth became the key to the gateway through which I was able to embrace those qualities in extreme metal, first coming in the way of being introduced to Carcass and Death while watching MTV Headbangers Ball at a friends house who was able to record the show on VHS. After which it was the floodgates opening, Morbid Angel and Sepultura, Obituary and Deicide, whatever I could come across and make copies of from friends’ albums (or copies of copies that they had acquired themselves). By that point I also owned every single Megadeth album up to that point, I was even aware of the release of Youthanasia being advertised at the local Sam Goody with a poster of that surreal artwork at their new release display (sadly they did not give me the poster when I asked). I bought Cryptic Writings the week it came out, and it might have been my most listened to album in 1997 because I was one of those odd ducks who loved the songwriting that their mid-paced, less frenetic approach was inspiring. In the late nineties/early aughts era I was also a frequenter at the message boards over at the band’s official website, Megadeth being early internet adopters and one of the first bands I remember having their own dedicated UBB message board, the Total Anarchy subforum being a goldmine for me regarding recommendations for other metal. In being a fan of Megadeth, I became a bigger fan of metal in general.
So it’s been admittedly a little disheartening to witness, online anyway, the relatively cynical and somewhat muted reaction to this final album on a critical level from metal fans in general. I’ll be the first to admit that on it’s own, I find Megadeth to be a good, while not quite great Deth record. There are parts that are really damn good, my favorite cuts being “Tipping Point” which is vintage Mustaine vitriol in a sharply cut album opener, and I love the recurring riff in “Another Bad Day”, that song harkening to that aforementioned love of the band’s mid-paced approach when its done right (“Hey God?!” also rings the bell in that regard). On the opposite end of the speed dial are absolute bangers in “I Don’t Care” and “Let There Be Shred”, the latter’s nearly cringe inducing lyrics overridden by a really satisfying riff progression. The rest of the album is decent to good, there’s nothing particularly terrible on offer, although the album finale “The Last Note” turned out more clunky than poignant (perhaps better to have gone the Sentenced route and end on an instrumental track but alas). Then there’s the bonus track, this being the Metallica cover of “Ride the Lightning” (I say cover although I know Mustaine was a co-writer on it), which is really the only thing I’ve seen people discuss at length about the album. It’s a great cover, I prefer it to Metallica’s version, but it should’ve been released as a standalone single long before this album came out because its dominated the conversation surrounding this release, and that’s a shame.
Originally I was writing a lengthy career retrospective piece on Megadeth, kinda going over all their albums as my own tribute to their career, but I shelved that a month ago because it was so unfocused and rambling that I was boring myself. Maybe I’ll clean it up and finish it one day when the band stops touring as a final sendoff, but for now I decided that I just wanted to write something short and simple to express my appreciation for the band amidst all the blasé opinions directed towards them and particularly Mustaine lately (maybe I’m not seeing the positive opinions thanks to algorithms, who knows). I’m not going to admonish people for feeling how they feel, but I wonder if most of us have become so jaded that we can’t tip our collective hat to a institution of metal that did a lot for the genre, influenced a ton of musicians we all love, and made some of the genre’s greatest records. Megadeth was a big deal to me as a developing metal fan, and even though I haven’t loved everything they’ve done (The World Needs A Hero might be one of the worst metal records ever), I loved much of their music and it really did shape my direction as a metal fan into all things intricate and abrasive. In beholding their last album, it’s the end of an era, a part of my childhood that’s going to permanently go away, which is a starkly sobering thought as well. So I applaud those Megadeth fans who helped the band get to number one, it was a fitting gesture to a band that meant a lot to likely more people than social media would have us believe.
