In a recent interview with 518Scene.com, MEGADETH bassist James LoMenzo was asked to compare his experience playing alongside guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari and drummer Dirk Verbeuren in the band’s current lineup with his time performing with past MEGADETH members.
“Well, you know I’ve been in an awful lot of bands, as anybody who’s ever tracked my career knows,” he said. “Everybody plays different. Everybody has a certain thing that they uniquely do. Dave [Mustaine, MEGADETH guitarist/vocalist] is always going to sound like Dave. As a matter of fact, I always say as soon as he lifts up his guitar and puts it on, it really doesn’t matter who’s playing in the band, because that’s the stamp; that’s the familiar sound. That said though, everybody is really completely reverent to the past in a very important way. We try to make the music as authentic as we possibly can.
“You can’t play it exactly — I will not be able to play exactly like [former MEGADETH bassist] David Ellefson, and Teemu will not be able to play exactly like the 20 guitar players before him, but we try and get the essence of it and try and get those parts sewn up really tight, so they come at the right time and they fire at the right time.”
“Dirk is just a fantastic drummer,” James continued. “I’ve played with tons of great drummers, but Dirk is really special in the context of this band. He plays reverently to the music, but he has a certain kind of concussion to his playing that’s immediate and very powerful and very strong and right on the money. As a matter of fact, when I rejoined the band, he was the first guy I played with before anybody else showed up. Just out of motor memory we went through a bunch of songs, without any guitars or vocals. I was prepared with the music and he had been playing it for a while, and man it was just astounding how tight we were immediately. That’s a testimony to him, maybe not as much as myself, because my job throughout my career has been to get into a band and get on board real quick and play the music well. But it seemed to me that when I started playing the stuff with him, it almost made me sound like I was playing it better, so I’m a big Dirk Verbeuren fan.”
When asked to explain how his playing style differs from Ellefson‘s, LoMenzo responded: “As far as rock and roll and metal bands go, I’m an originalist; I love the original band. So as much of an honor and how great it is to be part of this, I still have that little thing, that little fan guy thing, going with the real band. But we are very different in our trajectory. In my estimation, David Ellefson has defined the sound of this band with his bass playing as much as everybody else who’s been in the band, so I try to be very respectful and reverent to that.”
MEGADETH‘s latest album, The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead!, was released in September 2022. This is MEGADETH‘s first album to feature drummer Dirk Verbeuren, their final album with guitarist Kiko Loureiro, and their first studio release in six years since Dystopia (2016), marking the longest gap between studio albums in the band’s history.
Reeder, the visionary behind Metal Addicts, has transformed his lifelong passion for metal into a thriving online community for metal aficionados. As a fervent devotee of black metal, Reeder is captivated by its dark, atmospheric, and often unorthodox soundscapes.