Mark Yarm of The NY Times reports:
Last August, the long-running thrash-metal band Megadeth posted a video titled The End Is Near that opens with an apocalyptic montage out of the movies — cities on fire, despairing newscasters, that sort of thing. It was pretty much par for the course for a group that takes its name from a nuclear-warfare fatality metric and whose best-selling album is called Countdown to Extinction.
What was surprising: the part where an artificial intelligence-generated version of Megadeth’s skeletal mascot, Vic Rattlehead, cut in to announce that the band’s next studio album, its 17th, would be its last. “Forty years of metal, forged in steel, ending in fire,” Rattlehead said before revealing that a global farewell tour would commence in 2026.
The Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine, now 64, followed up with a written statement saying that he wanted to go out on his own terms and at the top of his game…
…Megadeth, along with Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax, is one of the so-called Big Four progenitors of thrash metal, a subgenre that emerged in the early 1980s, characterized by breakneck tempos and blistering riffs. Back then, the idea of those bands becoming huge successes would have been “beyond ridiculous,” Eddie Trunk, host of SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation metal show, said in an interview. “But they basically brought in a whole scene that is now very commonplace and has had a huge influence on a lot of the more current rock and metal bands.”
Among them is Chained Saint, a young, rising thrash group from southern Florida. The band’s guitarist, 18-year-old Ethan Kahn, cited Mustaine as a major inspiration: “He has a genuine knack for writing great songs while still appealing to the metalheads that want to hear those brain-scratching riffs that make you make a nice stank face” — a contorted expression relaying deep admiration…
…As for what he’ll do post-Megadeth, Mustaine wasn’t entirely sure. He mentioned staying involved with music in some way and rebuilding a World War II-era Harley-Davidson with his son, Justis, who is on his management team. In the meantime, Mustaine is focused on Megadeth’s farewell shows, which begin in Canada next month and have no set end date.
Had he envisioned Megadeth’s final concert? “I was joking around the other day about how I thought it would be a good idea to have a bunch of shows booked at the end of this tour, and don’t tell me which one is the real last one,” he said. Mustaine pictured getting on the tour bus after a gig and heading down the road for a while before someone would spring the news on him.
“Hey, well, that was our last show,” he imagined them saying. “No need to cry your eyes out up onstage tonight.
Read the entire article at The NY Times.