You’d have gotten great odds that Megadeth wouldn’t end in celebration. In April 1983, Metallica shook newly exiled bandmate Dave Mustaine out of a drunken slumber, handed him a bus ticket home, and instantly launched one of rock ‘n’ roll’s greatest inferiority complexes. Mustaine’s appetite for drugs and alcohol were only matched by a propensity for feuding and firing. In the meantime, the long-running companionship with bassist David Ellefson ended in disgrace and drummers Nick Menza and Gar Samuelsson passed away. By 2019, it seemed cancer might do what Mustaine’s addictions couldn’t, but it’s seven-years later and we still hear the sneer.
The self-titled, final Megadeth album might close with a return to “Ride The Lightning”, but it isn’t so much about closure as survival. Though the interviews around this farewell asserted that the decision was about finishing “on our own terms”, the lack of a next phase for Mustaine – apart from a tour – speaks to a go-figure, ‘holy shit I made it’ sense of relief. (For someone so easily compared to Billy Corgan, there’s an interesting amount of “we” in the press statement whether it refers to the current lineup, all the lineups, the Almighty, or just Dave speaking for the Daves in the “Sweating Bullets” promo).
Instead of going out with a nuclear bang, Megadeth serves lean sides that won’t clog the final tour’s setlists. Few people, including Mustaine, would have gone into this project thinking of creating a late-era Megadeth (much less thrash) classic, so the priorities seem to be speed, shades of classic riffs, and those familiar, gnashed-teeth vocals. From the start, the taut riffs betray the idea there’s a second guitarist (Teemu Mäntysaari) in the mix. Vaguely reminiscent of “High Speed Dirt”, “Tipping Point” gallops with menace while speaking from experience: “You will beg for silence / You will pray for peace”.
There aren’t many acoustic/prog interludes or spoken narratives, though the fourth wall is continuously broken and among the gleefully juvenile lyric constructions there’s room for that one stinker: “Pour me a double / And make it strong”. Where Endgame occasionally referred to the cacophony of Peace Sells or Dystopia just went heavy, this stripped-back/untethered version of the band explores various Megadeth iterations without ever planting a flag. “Hey God?!” might be walking “these streets alone”, as long we ignore those fellow, retiree (“Howdy, Dave!”) dog owners at daybreak in sunny, Southern California.
[Intentionally included blank space about riffs on the album that were written in clear admiration for 1990’s “Lucretia” and “Tornado Of Souls”.]
As for the “Ride The Lightning” re-approach: it’s an almost note-for-note cover. The only mystery about the track is how a septuagenarian Dave thinks he can get into the head of 20-year-old Dave. Besides, “Mechanix” on Megadeth’s first album already demonstrated the difference between their ideologies. Alas, that inferiority complex that fueled the whole endeavour… well, it’s still there.
