DAVID ELLEFSON: The Beauty Of Where MEGADETH Is At These Days

MEGADETH bassist David Ellefson was interviewed for a recent episode of the "Musicfrenzy Radio Network" podcast. You can now listen to the chat using the Podbean widget below.

Speaking about MEGADETH's recent U.S. tours with MESHUGGAH and SCORPIONS and how much input he and his bandmates have in deciding which groups to tour with, Ellefson said: "We very much have an input on that. Originally, it was funny, the tour with MESHUGGAH was the first concept we were working on in late 2016, and then out of the blue, we got the call from Danny Zelisko, who's the promoter here in Phoenix. We just played 'Seth Meyers' and went back to the hotel and I got a text from Danny. He said, 'Give me a call.' So I rang him and he said, 'Hey, I was just talking about ideas for the SCORPIONS tour next year. What do you think about MEGADETH [and] SCORPIONS?' I said, 'Totally. We would love to do that.' Me and Dave [Mustaine, guitar/vocals] and Kiko [Loureiro, guitar] are big SCORPIONS fans. We played with the SCORPIONS before, and it's always been a fun hang with those guys. Musically, it's good for the fans. So then all of a sudden, the SCORPIONS tour kind of went into first place and the MESHUGGAH tour got routed sort of secondary to that. So it's kind of interesting how things fall into place."

He continued: "This year, in 2018, we were thinking, 'We'll probably be off the road for a lot of the year working on a new album.' Next thing you know, all of a sudden, we're on tour through all of June in Europe doing festivals, and things are starting to fall in around it. So it's kind of the beauty of where the band is at these days where, obviously, we create and make new music, but at the same time, we've got these generational fans. And even young fans, who may have discovered the band on [2016's] 'Dystopia', they wanna go back and learn, so they learn about 'Killing Is My Business' and 'Peace Sells' and 'Rust In Peace' and all this stuff. So it's kind of like our phone keeps ringing to go out and keep playing and do stuff. And I think that's a really cool place in our career right now to be at."

Ellefson recently confirmed to "The Right To Rock" podcast that MEGADETH has begun putting together material for the follow-up to "Dystopia".

The band's upcoming effort will mark MEGADETH's first release to feature drummer Dirk Verbeuren (SOILWORK),who officially joined the group a year and a half ago.

"Dystopia" was MEGADETH's first album with Loureiro, best known for his work with ANGRA.