Teemu Mäntysaari on Being in Megadeth: “I Don’t Feel Like There’s Any Limit to My Creativity Here”

Megadeth isn’t exactly known for being a band where individual members are given free reign with their creative freedom. Chris Broderick recently said, without having any ill will towards Megadeth or Dave Mustaine, that leaving Megadeth for In Flames gave him a lot more freedom as a guitarist. Well, Megadeth’s current guitarist, Teemu Mäntysaari, thinks that being a guitarist in Megadeth offers him a lot of creative freedom as an artist.

In a recent interview that Teemu Mäntysaari did with Rudi Messiah, (as transcribed by Blabbermouth) Mäntysaari talked about what it was like to perform music originally recorded by some of Megadeth’s other legendary guitarists:

“I’m very relaxed about it. I mean, of course it feels great to be in a band that you’ve been a fan of and get to play the solos of these guys that you’ve looked up to for years. So, that just feels really great. And I don’t feel like there’s any limit to my creativity here. And we’ve been talking about coming up with riff ideas [for new MEGADETH music], and Dave [Mustaine, MEGADETH leader] has been very open about us, the band guys, offering ideas as well. And that’s what we’re gonna start doing very soon. And so far I’ve had my hands full learning the back catalog, which we’re still doing. We’re adding more songs as go along. So that has been a lot of fun.”

So it would seem everyone’s experience is different and, where one guitarist found a lack of creative freedom in Megadeth, another found it to be a great place to play with new ideas. Which is great, considering we now know the band’s actively working on new music as we speak.

We’ll see how that creative freedom comes to fruition when Mäntysaari finally gets to contribute to a Megadeth album.