In a recent interview with Chuck Armstrong on “Loudwire Nights,” MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine was asked about how the band’s dynamic has changed since guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari joined last year.
“Well, we are a band again,” Dave said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “It doesn’t feel like me and some side players or some session guys. Not that it felt like that with any of the previous lineups, but that was one of the fears that I had. I feel like Kiko [Loureiro, MEGADETH‘s previous guitarist] did us a really huge courtesy by helping us find Teemu because with Kiko needing to step down… I thought I was gonna finish my career out with Kiko, and when things came up with him, he couldn’t tour anymore because he needed to be home for his kids. So I see he’s touring again, which I’m happy that he’s still playing. But he had to go home. And when he did, he introduced us to Teemu. And it was an even closer connection between me and Teemu than Kiko and I had. We’ll [Kiko and I] always be friends, but this new relationship I have is — it harkens me back to the days when we had Marty Friedman in the band and the four of us actually felt like a band.”
Mustaine also discussed the possibility of a follow-up to MEGADETH‘s 2022 album The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead! When asked if he is currently considering the next full-length MEGADETH album, Mustaine responded: “Yes, we are. We’re not gonna be taking as long in between offerings as we did this time. There were a lot of setbacks — the pandemic, the blockade, you name it. It’s just so many things that went on. [My throat] cancer treatment, the lineup change, having to start from scratch with a new bassist. And the cancer treatment also was difficult on the guys because they were watching me go through all this stuff. And one day, I would be seemingly normal.
“The other day, I would be so medicated that I couldn’t stay awake. And that was hard for the guys to see. I had two days that I was really, really sick that I threw up. Out of the whole treatment, I thought that was really good. I was fighting with everything, every moral fiber of my being, to make sure that I stayed in the game, because they kept saying over and over again, ‘If you don’t eat, if you lose weight, we’re gonna put a tube in you.’ And I got so serious. And we started to pick up the pace when we were doing the [The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead!] record.”
In a recent interview with John The Metal Mailman, Mäntysaari was asked if there had been any discussion about him and his bandmates working on new music.
“Yeah, that’s actually the plan,” he responded. “Right now everybody’s gathering their own riff ideas, and then, at some point, we’re gonna put them together and probably record in Nashville. And the plan is to get the next album done next year.”
When asked if he’s been writing riffs for potential new MEGADETH music, Teemu replied: “I’ve got a bunch of stuff. What I do is I just pick up the guitar, I usually improvise and come up with ideas, then I record it on my phone, just the video. And I leave it there maybe for a week or two so I forget it. I wanna forget it, and then when I look back at it, then that maybe inspires me to look at the riff from a different perspective and maybe I get another idea from that. And then I record it down on my computer, laid out with the click track and do double-tracked guitars, and then save it in the folder of ideas.
“And what we’ve been talking about is that Dave [Mustaine, MEGADETH leader] often wants to work in this riff-based idea, not necessarily that everybody brings full songs, but you bring riffs and then we listen to them together and then we pick things that might go together well. And then that’s how the songs start to actually form.”
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