New Megadeth Album Will be “Fast” and “Aggressive” and Has Blast Beats; Megadeth Festival in the Works for 2019
On a scale of 1-10, how amped (or not) are all of you for Megadeth’s next album? I think I’m somewhere around a five. Fair or not, Super Collider (2013) left such a steaming pile of turds in my mouth that I could hardly muster the energy to care much about its follow-up, Dystopia (2016). I recall the latter having a couple of decent jams, but the former was so shit-tastic I needed a longer recovery period to get back to a place where I can appreciate ‘Deth again. Mustaine’s political rants and raves really hurt too, and while he’s been very quiet on those lately I do have to wonder where his thoughts are at the moment (has he really evolved, or is he just holding back publicly?).
Anyhoo, new ‘Deth’s a comin’, and in a recent interview with Mitch Lafon [transcribed by Ultimate Guitar], Mustaine indicates it’s gonna be on the heavier side:
“We’ve been putting new music up in my Dropbox. And the stuff that Dirk’s [Verbeuren, drums] been playing along to it is scary. We’ve never had any of those blast-beat kind of things in our music before.
“Some of the drumming on this is mind-blowing. It’s making me a better guitar player again, which I love. But I never thought we were gonna be playing this fast or this aggressive again.”
That’s certainly promising, although musicians say exactly this kind of thing pretty much universally in the lead up to new albums, so let’s wait and see. Mustaine dropped April of 2019 as a potential release date for the effort.
Meanwhile, Mustaine revealed some plans he has for a Megadeth-themed festival in 2019 which he’s teasing as an updated version of Gigantour:
“We’re hoping April of next year. We’ve got a huge festival that we’re gonna be announcing and I’ll have management tell you everything as soon as possible.
“It’s really a big deal. It’s kind of an equivalent of Gigantour, but it’s a much fresher idea. We’ve got that set up in about 10 cities in April. We’re gonna do that again for a three-day weekend in the middle of the year, and then we’re gonna do probably about another 10 of those dates at the latter part of the year.
“We’ve got a bunch of other really fantastic things that I wish I could tell you. We’ve got a cruise, like a ‘Murder Who Died’ kind of boot camp thing we’re gonna be doing over in Europe. And Pledge [Music] is gonna be in the studio with us again, and blah blah blah blah… So it’s a great day to be a Megadeth fan.”
I’m intrigued, and based on that language it seems the festival is more than just an idea — it’s already booked. Very curious to learn what it ends up being. There will certainly be a hole in the touring festival scene next year with Warped Tour wrapping up for good this summer and the Mayhem Festival and Ozzfest long gone, although the standalone full-weekend Wimmer festivals (Fort Rock, Rock on the Range, Carolina Rebellion, etc.) have largely taken up the slack.
We’ll keep you posted on news related to both ‘Deth’s new album and festival.
