In a tale of unyielding determination and unwavering convictions, the saga of when Dave Mustaine, the legendary frontman of MEGADETH, refused to share the stage with the controversial band DISSECTION shall forever be etched in the annals of heavy metal history.
The year was 2005, and the two bands were on the same bill at Metalist Festival in Israel, but DISSECTION got thrown out of the bill along with Greek black metallers ROTTING CHRIST.
During an interview on the Israeli radio program Met Al Meta, Mustaine, who is a born-again Christian, expressed his concerns about being in the company of individuals who might negatively impact him following his 2002 rehabilitation experience.
“I never said that I hated anybody; I just didn’t wanna play with them,” Mustaine explained. “I was so curious to see the poster for the concert, because it was written in the Hebrew font, or script, or whatever you call it, and then I saw the band DISSECTION and I thought, ‘Well, that’s a cool name.’ And I looked it up and I went, ‘Uh-oh.’ So I told the promoter, I said, ‘Look, we can’t play. We’re not gonna play that festival.’ I never said, ‘Kick them off.’ That was the promoter’s mistake. The promoter kicked them off. It’s hard enough as it is in music to get concerts, so I would never kick a band off one of my shows; I would rather me not do it. And when I said, ‘Look, we don’t wanna do it,’ they, unfortunately, harmed that band.”
DISSECTION frontman, Jon Nodtveidt, was connected to a Satanic cult in Sweden and, starting in 1997, served a seven-year sentence for his role in a murder. In 2006, Nodtveidt passed away due to an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Ultimately, MEGADETH performed alongside DISSECTION, but regarding ROTTING CHRIST, Mustaine commented that they “had a name that was kind of offensive to me. But, you know, that’s a personal thing. It has nothing to do with their band or their quality of music or them as a person…What you’ve gotta understand is my decision not to play with them doesn’t have anything to do with their value and worth as people, because I’m sure they’re probably really great people. Sometimes we name our bands stuff to get a reaction out of people, and it’s not really who or what we are.”
