Megadeth Are Number One … Finally!

It’s not difficult to picture the smirk, the guttural “heh,” and the flush of pride that must have seized Dave Mustaine’s face on Sunday when he learned that Megadeth’s self-titled LP, their 17th and supposedly last record, was this week’s Number One album. Megadeth fans have been rooting for this day for more than four decades, and Megadeth has had no bigger fan since day one than their founder and singer-guitarist himself.

Just four years ago, when I asked Mustaine why his band’s last album, The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead!, still thrashed so violently hard, what drove him to break the speed limits of metal even as he neared retirement age, he deadpanned, “Well, I still have a couple of bands in my crosshairs that I’m going after.” But then again, he could have retorted the same thing about any Megadeth album he’s put out since 1985.

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Year after year, the fiery frontman has fueled Megadeth albums by drawing from a deep well of underdog jealousy — envy of the crossover success of a band he co-founded (cough, Metallica, cough)and bitter contempt for any and every artist ahead of him on the Billboard chart. (This means you, Billy Ray Cyrus, since nobody has built more with an aching, broken heart than Dave Mustaine.) But now, four decades after releasing the metal gem “Wake Up Dead,” Dave woke up a winner.

“After 40 years of delivering Megadeth music, playing shows around the world, I have nothing but gratitude at this moment,” he said of the news in an uncharacteristically humble statement. “Finding out that our last Megadeth record is also our first Number One only further validates my will to go out on top.”

Of course, Dave has always been on top, even when he didn’t know it. As a Megadeth fan since the early Nineties (I was a member of the Megadeth Cyber Army fan club when “cyber” was still just a sci-fi word), I’ve always felt frustrated reading interviews in which he dwelled so much on competition. I remember reading one interview in a guitar magazine sometime around the release of Youthanasia (1994) in which he differentiated his guitar playing style from that of then-lead guitarist Marty Friedman by saying that Friedman, a virtuoso, played with love while he played with hate. It makes for good copy, especially for a gnashed-teeth metal band, but it also speaks to the deep resentment he felt for his lot in life when, hey, Youthanasia made it up to Number Four and was certified platinum when many of Mustaine’s and Metallica’s peers (Exodus, Testament, and even Slayer and Anthrax) could hardly even dream of similar commercial success.

Of course, Mustaine’s enmity took root on April 11, 1983, the day Metallica fired him over his volatile temper and alcoholism right before recording their genre-defining debut album, and with each passing year, his contempt blossomed into a mighty oak. There’s a whole chapter in his autobiography, Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir (2010), about the unwarranted embarrassment he felt the first time he heard “Enter Sandman,” a song that used the same children’s prayer (“Now I lay me down to sleep”) that Megadeth used on “Go to Hell,” since he assumed metalheads would figure he was biting off Metallica even though Megadeth’s song technically arrived a month before the Black Album. This, of course, was in a book dedicated to “all of the people who told me I would never … ” (he left that blank for you to fill in).

But Dave should have felt like a winner when he started getting royalty checks from Metallica for songs he wrote as a teenager before he’d even joined the band, like “Jump in the Fire” and “The Four Horsemen” (a song Metallica originally recorded as “The Mechanix,” which Mustaine re-recorded with Megadeth on the band’s debut album.) And he should have felt like a victor when Metallica’s second album, Ride the Lightning, credited him with songwriting on two songs, the title track and the magnificent instrumental “The Call of Ktulu.” Mustaine alleged that the band used riffs from a tape he’d left behind to write the songs, but hey, he still got credits and paychecks for two kick-ass songs, even if he still felt the compulsion to reclaim the “Ktulu” chord progression on Megadeth’s “Hangar 18” and cover “Ride the Lightning” on the just-released Number One album Megadeth. Those two Metallica albums were certified multiplatinum thanks to his innovative songwriting.

And naturally, Dave should have felt honored when Slayer guitarist Kerry King joined Megadeth for a few early gigs out of admiration for Dave, since King had been wowed by Mustaine’s playing in Metallica’s garage days. Within a few years, Megadeth started achieving their own success, too: Their second album, Peace Sells … but Who’s Buying? (1986), went platinum, and the bass riff from the title track served as MTV News’ bumper for years. The band’s next two records, So Far, So Good … So What! (1988) and Rust in Peace (1990), also achieved platinum status. Rust in Peace even made enough of a lasting impact to be celebrated in irony by The Onion in 2015.

Then in 1992, a year after Metallica’s Black Album came out and Mustaine’s whole imagined “Go to Hell” debacle, Megadeth’s Countdown to Extinction became a metal juggernaut thanks to the mainstream metal hits “Symphony of Destruction” (a Number 71 “pop” song on the Hot 100!), “Sweating Bullets,” and “Skin o’ My Teeth.” The title track won an award from the Humane Society of the United States for drawing attention to how sickening it is for people to hunt helpless “caged” animals. And, for all it’s worth, the final song, “Ashes in Your Mouth,” is one of my all-time favorite thrash guitar songs.

The album debuted at Number Two, just behind Cyrus’ Some Gave All, a thorn in Mustaine’s side (at least until now) driving him to push the revolving door of Megadeth musicians even harder on record after record. (Let’s pause to acknowledge the 32 musicians who have passed through Megadeth’s ranks over the years, tolerating Mustaine’s ego, temper, and perfectionism.) Over the years, Megadeth earned more gold and platinum plaques, a Grammy, and the respect of metalheads the world over, all while pursuing the “sweet taste of vindication,” to borrow a line from “Ashes in Your Mouth.” But none of those achievements were a Number One album, especially with an ever-present looming, if imagined, rivalry.

Mustaine had a chance to air his grievances to at least one Metallica member, drummer Lars Ulrich, during the filming of Some Kind of Monster (2004). In the movie’s most memorable scene, Mustaine reveals his psychology, explaining how any time he heard Metallica on the radio he still felt like he’d fucked up. “It’s been hard, Lars,” he said. “It’s been hard to watch everything that you guys do and touch turn to gold and everything that I do fucking backfire. And I’m sure there’s a lot of people that would consider my backfire complete success. And am I happy being number two? No.”

“Do I feel some guilt [for firing you]? Uh, yes, I do,” Ulrich said. “But at the same time it’s difficult for me to comprehend that the only thing that you feel when you look back on the last 20 years is rooted in the Metallica thing.”

It’s emotional to watch the disconnect between the two old friends, but at the same time it also speaks to Mustaine’s singular success. Mustaine would not have a Number One album of his own today were it not for his will to persevere, and it’s plausible that Metallica would never have earned a Number One themselves if they’d stuck to the laser-focused thrash metal Megadeth have perfected.

But even aside “the Metallica thing” — and it’s worth noting that Metallica and Mustaine have reconciled a few times in the past 15 years — Dave Mustaine should have always felt like a champion. Megadeth have a signature sound that’s been oft imitated but never replicated. It’s in the sarcastic snarl of “Peace Sells” (“I didn’t know you had any feelings”), the way the opening riffs of “Lucretia” uncoil from eerie elasticity into a taut blues figure, and the architecture of aggression in the fusion of punky chords and blues slides in the main riff of “Skin o’ My Teeth.” “Hello me, meet the real me,” Mustaine sneered on “Sweating Bullets,” but the real Mustaine was always there, even if he couldn’t see it in the mirror.

To my ears, the music on the new Megadeth is an affirmation of everything Mustaine created. The warp-speed riffing of “Tipping Point,” the confessions of “Hey God?!” (“Sometimes I feel so insecure as I walk these streets alone,” Mustaine huffs on the song), and, finally, Megadeth’s rendition of “Ride the Lightning” all feel like the summary of a legacy that ought to speak for itself. Unfortunately, nobody can speak to Dave Mustaine’s virtues better than Dave Mustaine himself, so if Megadeth really is the band’s valediction, at least Mustaine knows he’s indisputably being heard this time. Here’s to finally being Number One!