An opinion piece from 2010. I think the reference to ‘emotional hardcore’ in the final paragraph was probably past its sell by date even back then. I wasn’t the target market for Emo, so how was I supposed to know?
Cor…shredding became unfashionable for a long time didn’t it? Now I’m old and grumpy and don’t care for fashion any more, I find myself getting quite interested in Megadeth. I was already familiar with some of their work: I’d owned ‘So Far So Good So What’ since about 1989, I saw the ‘Clash of the Titans’ Slayer/Megadeth gig at Wembley the same year and once, when I used them as a reference in an interview, I ended up having a fight with one of the blokes I was in a band with. So, Megadeth were obviously pretty controversial among indie bands from North London. That alone is reason to like them if you ask me but there is more to it than that. First though, some background for those among us who haven’t been reading Kerrang since issue one.
Megadeth were formed sometime in the mid 1980s by former Metallica lead guitarist Dave Mustaine and were part of the original so-called ‘Big Four of Thrash Metal’ i.e. Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax and Megadeth. All of these artists went on to great things but while the others achieved a level of respect outside the genre due to various reasons. Metallica’s worldwide success, for example, or Slayer’s punk rock roots and uncompromising attitude and Anthrax’s association with Public Enemy. But Megadeth have never had this kind of kudos. Probably because they have never attempted to court ‘alternative’ credibility. Still, that didn’t stop them from outselling all their contemporaries- except Metallica- to the tune of 15 million records (and counting).
Apart from Metallica, the 1990’s pretty much killed heavy metal for most of us. Which was fine, it needed putting out of its misery anyway. My recent renewed curiosity about Megadeth started a few years ago at the Download festival. They were on the bill and for some reason they were in the middle of the ill-fated ‘indie’ day. After hours and hours of various semi-professional shamblings by pasty faced youths it was great to see someone come on with pointy guitars and a drum kit in a cage. It was a pretty uncompromising performance and drew the biggest crowd of the day. I was impressed but apart from scrounging a Dave Mustaine signature plectrum that day, it took me a while to do anything else about it.
That changed recently when, taking advantage of the Aussie dollar/UK pound exchange rate, I bought a load of CDs while in Sydney and ‘Megadeth’s Greatest Hits’ was one of them (the limited edition with live DVD included of course). I was already familiar with the song ‘In My Hour Of Need’ from way back in 1989 but all the rest was new to me. So, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the band has never really deviated from being- as one of their old t-shirts said- ‘The State Of The Art Speed Metal Band’ and they have carried on making some pretty enthralling rock music while I had been looking the other way, put off by the trad metal façade. For example, the opening track of this compilation is ‘Holy Wars (The Punishment Due)’ which seems to have three movements in three different tempos and features some fearsome right hand rhythm action. Elsewhere ‘The Mechanix’ is a controversial song as it is a hangover from Dave Mustaine’s days as a member of Metallica and is almost exactly the same as Metallica’s ‘Four Horsemen’. Except it is at least twice as fast (Mustaine co-authored the song and claims the right to use it to his own ends). Also included is ‘A Tout Le Monde’ which is a song that gained infamy in 2006 when the perpetrator of the Dawson College shootings claimed that the song convinced him to perform the attack (and by the way, a new version of this track appeared on a subsequent Megadeth album and IMHO is remarkably superior to the original. MTV banned the video too, which is usually a good sign). The best track on ‘Megadeth’s Greatest Hits’ though, is ‘Hanger 18’. Full on from the word go, the arrangement constantly shifts and is probably the best showcase of the interplay between Mustaine and fellow guitarist Marty Friedman. Highlights include the great twin guitar vibrato in the verse, like some kind of jacked up, caffeine mainline Thin Lizzy, a thunderous climax that manages to take up half of the song without releasing any of the tension and all of the ELEVEN guitar solos. Even if you don’t particularly like guitar solos you have to tip your hat to the amount of self belief required to not only record a song that contains eleven guitar solos, but to then have the balls to release it as a single.
It’s not all good news with Megadeth though. I could do without clichéd sci fi metal artwork and I can’t admit to liking everything the band has done (which is no big deal. I don’t like everything Neil Young has recorded either but it still doesn’t stop me from being a massive fan). For example, looking back over the back catalogue, the hugely popular ‘Sweating Bullets’ doesn’t really do it for me and I can also leave behind the band’s versions of Alice Cooper’s ‘No More Mr Nice Guy’ and the Sex Pistol’s ‘Anarchy In The UK’. The latter being the only dull spot on the aforementioned ‘So Far So Good So What’ album which also contains the fantastically titled ‘Into The Lungs Of Hell’ and the awesome PRMC baiting ‘Hook in Mouth’, another personal favourite. I will also admit that Megadeth can be an acquired taste, much of the band’s output is not an easy listen and one has to sometimes work to get inside the frequently dense arrangements. But, of course, that makes it all the more rewarding when the ear tunes in at last.
Finally, there are also far too few artists of Dave Mustaine’s ilk tackling social and political issues and he should be commended for his commitment to addressing these subjects. As ‘emotional hardcore’ seems to be the current way that men with distorted guitars have of showing their anger, it makes Megadeth’s brand of socially aware, old skool speed metal more vital than ever.