Brave Words recently caught up with Megadeth guitarist/vocalist Dave Mustaine to discuss the largely negative response to the band’s latest album ‘Super Collider.’ A couple of excerpts from the chat can be found below.
Although ‘Super Collider’ debuted at No. 6 on the Billboard charts following its release in June this year, many fans and critics expressed their disappointment in the album’s radio-friendly vibe and lack of thrash elements. However,
Mustaine argued that online reviews were done by, “a handful of trolls” and were not a genuine reflection of the bands fans response to the album: “Our real fan-base respect what we do, they know that Megadeth isn’t limited to just thrash nomenclature. We’ve never fit within those parameters, and anybody that has ever asked us what our music is like I’ve always said we’re just Megadeth. Like a jazz, classical, punk-influenced band that plays all different kinds of songs.”
Mustaine explained that unlike many other renowned metal and rock acts, Megadeth’s sound was ever-evolving: “We’re the guys that wrote ‘Black Friday’, but were different. We’re not like AC/DC, we’re not like MOTÖRHEAD, our songs aren’t really similar, straight-forward rock songs. It’s straight-forward metal.”
He argued that the internet gave a false perception of people’s opinions: “…I think with the internet, you can have a guy with a hundred email accounts talking smack on these bottom-feeder websites. People read that and think ‘this guy is real’ and he’s not real, there’s two or three people that their whole campaign is to talk shit about everybody. Not just Dave Mustaine, not just Megadeth, they hate everything. Half these little farts wouldn’t say this to my face cuz they’d piss their pants if they stood in front of me.”
Mustaine also put the album’s lack of success down to current trends in the metal scene: “…you have the metal purists, and all they want to hear is real whiny screaming vocals, growling shit and no singing anymore. Some of the people that we most respect in our genre are the people that sing. Like Bruce (Dickinson; IRON MAIDEN) sings, James (Hetfield; METALLICA) sings, I sing. And Rob sings in (JUDAS) PRIEST. And we kind of lost the sight in it. I really admire Phil Anselmo (PANTERA, DOWN)…”
Mustaine went on to predict that clean vocals would once again dominate the metal genre: “I think we’re in phase with metal music right now and it’s coming back to singing. A lot of the new bands … I can’t name a bunch of them, but my son is always playing new bands for me. And one time he came up to me and said, ‘you got to check this new band called HAVOK, they are like a young Megadeth.’ I said ‘really, you think so?’ When you hear somebody else say that something sounds like you it’s kind of like when someone says this guy looks like you and you look at the photo, and you say ‘you must be blind!’”