Syracuse, New York radio station 95X recently conducted interview with MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine. You can listen to entire interview at this location. Couple of excerpts follow below.
Speaking about writing and recording process for “Dystopia” following the 2014 departures of drummer Shawn Drover and guitarist Chris Broderick, Mustaine said:
“Well, we had a lot of fun making this record. It started… The embryonic stage of this record was with Chris and Shawn, but there was a lot of really sad stuff that had happened between those two guys and our management [at the time], and something that David Ellefson had said that caused them to leave.”
He continued: “When we tried to go through with the ‘Rust In Peace’ lineup change, it just… it wasn’t meant to be. So going through that whole upheaval; and two management changes over the course of a year, which is really difficult; my mother-in-law in the final stages of Alzheimer’s [disease] and then her going missing for two months before we found her after she had died; that was a lot of crap to go through. So I’m in [my home state of] Tennessee trying to piece together the rest of the record, and I kind of went from this place where I was sad about all this stuff that was happening to where I got really motivated. For some stupid reason, I clicked on this motivational audio track that was online, and it just had all these really great quotes and stuff from fight flicks I’d watched as a kid and movies of battles and stuff. And I just thought, ‘You know what? I’m not gonna let anybody tell me what I can and can’t do. I’m gonna be the arbiter of the limitations in my life.’ And that’s when we set out to do this record.”
Asked if would agree that there seems to be more excitement about “Dystopia” than there has been about a new MEGADETH record in a long time, Mustaine said: “I definitely agree with that. I think that it could be contributable to the lineup change; it could have been contributable to the decision to not go backwards in time; but I guarantee you that it wouldn’t have turned out as good with Nick and Marty as it would have with Kiko and Chris. Because it’s just… Going and seeing those guys [Nick and Marty], seeing where they were, seeing their condition and how they play now and what they play, it still would have been ‘Dystopia’, but it would have been a different record. And I think that the expectations of people would have been so high and so unrealistic.”
He went on to say: “This is a fresh start for us. People were surprised. Everyone that heard that Chris was in the band was surprised. Everyone, when they found out about Kiko, they were, like, ‘Who the hell is this guy?’ And when they started looking him up, they were going, ‘Mustaine did it again; he picked another winner.’ And I’m just excited, because, you know, I don’t think I’m special, I just know what I like, and I think that’s why our fans have such a good relationship with me, because I’m just a normal dude that knows what he likes.”
Listen to entire interview here.
MEGADETH‘s fifteenth studio album, “Dystopia”, will be released on January 22, 2016. Album was recorded earlier in the year in Nashville, Tennessee and was mixed by Josh Wilbur, who has previously worked with LAMB OF GOD, ALL THAT REMAINS and GOJIRA.
