The origins of MEGADETH’s iconic name are once again in the spotlight, thanks to a revealing conversation on the latest episode of The David Ellefson Show. During the interview, original MEGADETH guitarist Greg Handevidt sat down with former bassist David Ellefson and co-host Joshua Toomey to reflect on the band’s formative days — and dropped a surprising claim about the band’s name.
According to Handevidt, it wasn’t frontman Dave Mustaine who came up with “MEGADETH,” but him.
“We were sitting down in our little apartment,” Handevidt recalled, “and Dave had read a pamphlet by Senator Alan Cranston talking about the ‘arsenals of megadeath’. That triggered something — and I remember thinking, ‘Holy s**t… arsenals of megadeath.’ I thought, ‘That would be a cool name for a band.’”
Handevidt said he was hesitant about using the word “death” in a band name, so he decided to drop the “A” from the original word and combine it into one: MEGADETH.
“I just wrote it on a piece of paper and said, ‘This is cool. It’s unique. It doesn’t have a dark connotation. I think people would see it and not be put off,’” he explained. “I think at the time, Capitol Records might not have been ready to sign a band just called ‘DEATH’.”
Interestingly, Handevidt says Mustaine wasn’t immediately sold on the name. “And then I remember a couple of days later he came back and he was, like, ‘Yeah, this is growing on me.’ And that’s how it came about. That’s the story. It was a quick little thing.”
However, this story clashes with the account Mustaine gave in his 2010 memoir, Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir, where he credited short-lived early vocalist Lawrence “Lor” Kane with suggesting the name. Mustaine wrote that Kane made the suggestion during a drive, inspired by a song Mustaine had already written titled “Megadeath.”
The name itself originally came from a political pamphlet Mustaine read while traveling back to California after being kicked out of METALLICA. The phrase “arsenal of megadeath” stuck with him — and ultimately gave rise to one of the most recognized names in heavy metal history.
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