Althea Legaspi and Kory Grow of Rolling Stone report:
Dave Mustaine is readying his final Megadeth album, aptly titled Megadeth. More than 40 years since Mustaine founded the band, he views the album —…as a fitting coda to the vaunted thrash pioneers’ run. As part of the album, Mustaine confirms to Rolling Stone the rumors that he rerecorded his version of Ride the Lightning, the title song of Metallica’s 1984 album for which he got a co-writing credit following his 1983 departure from the band.
“It wasn’t really that I wanted to do my version,” he tells Rolling Stone. “I think that we all wanted it to turn out a certain way, and for me, this was about something so much more than how a song turns out. It was about respect.”
That respect, he says, is for Metallica singer-guitarist James Hetfield. “No one ever talks to me about that,” he says of Hetfield’s prowess. “One day he’s a singer, the next day he’s this f–king powerhouse, and I’ve always respected him as a guitar player.”
“So I wanted to do something to close the circle on my career right now, since it started off with [Mustaine’s band before Metallica] Panic and several of the songs that ended up in the Metallica repertoire, I wanted to do something that I felt would be a good song,” he explains of choosing to include his rendition of Ride the Lightning for Megadeth’s farewell album.
Metallica developed the song, using some of Mustaine’s guitar riffs, into a hair-raising narrative about a wrongfully convicted man awaiting execution. The title “ride the lightning,” a euphemism for dying by electric chair, came from Stephen King’s The Stand. Their recording was a kinetic thrashathon with machine-gun-fast guitar notes and solos and Hetfield’s convincing screams for mercy. Megadeth’s recording is a little faster and a little deeper, since it’s in a lower key, and Mustaine snarls the lyrics more than Hetfield but the guitar playing sounds just as muscular.
Read more at Rolling Stone.
Megadeth recently released Tipping Point as the first single, and video, from their forthcoming self-titled final album due out in 2026, listen to it here.
One Response
Personally, I think it’s perfectly fine for Megadeth to record “Ride the Lightning”, after all, Mustaine is a co writer on the track. And i hope Megadeth recording it for their last album drives Lars bat s–t crazy.