Kirk Hammett Never Put Together A Cross-Country Metal Tour—So There! | Dave Mustaine’s racked up quite the list of accomplishments since his Metallica days.
Megadeth
Gigantour, featuring In Flames, Children of Bodom, Job For A Cowboy, High On Fire. May 14 (8pm). Shaw Conference Centre (9797 Jasper Ave). Tickets: $45, available through Ticketmaster (451-8000/ticketmaster.ca).
We’re partway through what has been, frankly, a rather tepid interview when Dave Mustaine loses focus entirely.
“Oh my God!” he exclaims. “They’re showing a two-faced baby on CNN Headline News!” Whatever we were talking about is instantly forgotten during the ensuing conversation surrounding said medical oddity. And that’s okay.
The distraction is welcome because so far the ground we’ve covered is interesting... but hardly riveting. The guitarist/frontman of Megadeth, on the phone from a hotel room in Denver, is fighting off a sinus condition, the result of spending several weeks at his California beach house before being forced to acclimatize to the dry-air extremes of mountain zones and northern latitudes where Gigantour, the massive metal tour that Mustaine himself created, is now taking him.
We’ve discussed how, in the years since recovering from a debilitating arm injury and a forced hiatus from playing music, he’s adopted an exercise regime on the road to be able to make it through what he refers to as “metal aerobics every night.” And, with a gentle warning from Roadrunner Records (the label behind United Abominations—Megadeth’s 2007 near-return to peak form) we’ve been avoiding certain subject matter that puts off this notoriously prickly musician as well.
Any mention of Metallica, the legendary band that formed with Mustaine as its original lead guitarist, is strictly taboo. And while the subject of God, now present in Mustaine’s life in his post-substance abuse, post-career-resurgence years, isn’t entirely verboten, I’ve been told that things will go better if I steer clear of that other “M” band.
And so, Mustaine’s sudden shift in concentration is not a problem. In fact, it’s a good thing, because his news-junkie tendencies are what separate Megadeth from the heavy-music pack. Arguably, it also has much to do with the six consecutive platinum albums and seven consecutive Grammy nominations (before the band’s career was all but decapitated by 1999’s complete stinker, Risk) that have come Mustaine’s way since he departed Metallica with an uncharted future and success—the ultimate form of revenge—on his angry young mind.
Mustaine decided early on that servings of generic Satanism and the metal genre’s typically masculine overdrive were not going to cut it. “I wanted to be my own person,” he says. “I wanted to soldier on because I’d gone from being an absolute unknown to one of the most famous guitar players in the world in a short period of time on my own. So I was thinking, ‘I’m going to continue to seek my place in history on my own and try to find guys that have the same vision.’”
Yes, that “place in history” line does smack of arrogance. Or rather, it would be arrogant if it weren’t true. It remains to be seen what the verdict of future metal historians will be, but based on both bands’ recent output, it’s looking like the best part of Metallica left before they even cut their first record. For most Megadeth fans, the thread begins with 1986’s sophomore release Peace Sells... But Who’s Buying, boasting a sociopolitical title track that spotlighted Mustaine’s ability to pour blistering dual-guitar showmanship, pounding bass lines, and snarling vocals into uncommonly current events.
“I think what sets Megadeth apart from some of the other bands out there is that some guys will grab a topic they think is important to write about, but they don’t know how to keep it timely or timeless,” says Mustaine, emphasizing that last syllable. “For me, I’ve got a way of taking events and kind of removing that period at the end of the sentence and putting those three dots at the end of it.”
Given the critical respect and sold-out shows that have followed in the wake of United Abominations, it’s a formula Mustaine likely won’t be abandoning anytime soon. And even though the album’s repeated bashing of the UN smacks slightly of that American trait of championing democracy but slipping a little when it comes to its global practice, the interview winds to a close with Mustaine expressing his belief that Canada and the U.S. are mostly on the same page—thus the appeal of his lyrics both north and south of the border.
“The process up there is basically the same,” he says. “You want democracy, you want to know that what you want counts and if there’s something wrong we can trust these people we put into office to do their fucking jobs. “But they don’t.”
