MACHINE HEAD: PRESS. MEGADETH: PRESS/GREGG MCCABE.
“I hope so, yeah,” was Dave Mustaine’s response when we asked him just under two years ago whether we’d see a new Megadeth album by the end of 2020. “We’ll start back in a couple of days and keep plowing until it’s done… I’m going to get ready and to come back and make a brilliant Megadeth record.”
The thrash legend had recently announced (live onstage at Wembley Arena, no less) that he was now cancer-free, and focus was fully turning to the next chapter of his band’s legacy. Of course, we all know what happened next, and while some metal heavyweights used 2020’s enforced time off to churn out new material or venture into streaming, Dave was seemingly (and understandably!) content to retreat from the frontlines for a bit and tweak the material he’d been working on up until that point.
In autumn last year, Megadeth - minus one David Ellefson, who’d been dumped from the band for, well, you know -dusted themselves off for 2021’s biggest metal tour alongside Lamb Of God, Trivium and Hatebreed, also revealing in that time that the 16th Megadeth album, The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead! would finally be coming in 2022.