MOURN THE END OF SUMMER WITH ANOTHER ROUND OF KING VS. MUSTAINE

So maybe the Megadeth/Slayer tour won’t be coming to the States after all.

After successfully completing a very short Canadian run together, it looked like the two thrash giants had finally kissed and made-up. (The long-standing King/Mustaine feud is infamous.) Then Mustaine had to go and be a dick.

Well, now it seems that Kerry King has responded, albeit indirectly. Blabbermouth, transcribing from a video from a site called Metal Sickness, reports that King said the following at a press conference in Paris on Monday:

“We only did four [shows with MEGADETH so far on the current touring cycle]. I think it’s cool for the fans [to have SLAYER and MEGADETH touring together], you know. Everybody’s all worried about the beef with me and Dave; we don’t really get along. But I don’t really have anything against him. I think he’s a great guitar player. When we had that Canada thing pop up, I just said, ‘I’m gonna go, and if I see Dave, I’ll be cordial. I’ll say, ‘Hey, Dave. What’s up?!’ But if he’s a dick to me, I’m gonna be a bigger dick to him. And that’s how [the upcoming SLAYER/MEGADETH tour of] Australia is gonna be, and that’s how the next Canadian tour [with MEGADETH] is gonna be. I think maybe he’s grown up a bit because I think he’s a little pompous and I think he’s a big hypocrite — that’s my problem with him, personally — but I could never take anything away from his guitar playing; I think he’s great.”

Now if I were going to make an anti-King argument, I’d say that while maybe what Mustaine said wasn’t cool, it wasn’t outright dickish, and it’s possible he didn’t realize how obnoxious it sounded, and now King is just being a big baby by saying he’s going to out-dick the Megadick.

But I’d be wrong. ‘Cause King is pretty much completely right.

Mustaine is an awesome guitar player, and he’s about to release a really excellent album that we can all be proud bears the Megadeth franchise’s name. But it is possible to like the music but not the man, and Mustaine is also, as we’ve already pointed out, a dick. And what he said was either a) passive aggressive or b) demonstrative of a lack of awareness so uproarious that Mustaine must secretly be in politics. (Actually, sometimes I think Mustaine wishes he were in politics. So I may not be too far off there.) And since Mustaine has said that he agreed to the initial Slegadeth tour specifically in order to squash the feud, his comments seem twice as uncool.

So this Australian/New Zealand leg of the tour is happening. And unless I’m completely misreading what King just said, it seems that the whole tour is going back to Canada at some point. If that’s the case, I’d just like to say again that I’d really, really, really like if they’d swing down south a little. Just as far as New York or some place within reasonable driving distance of New York. But I don’t think that’ll happen if these dudes don’t cut it out.

Then again, all this controversy is probably good for ticket sales.

-AR

Thanks for the tip, Kidd.