CHRIS ADLER Explains Why Winning GRAMMY With MEGADETH 'Meant More' Than Winning It With LAMB OF GOD Would Have Meant

In a new interview with Chris Akin Presents…, former LAMB OF GOD drummer Chris Adler, who played on MEGADETH's "Dystopia" album, spoke about receiving a Grammy statuette for his work on the LP. MEGADETH was honored with a Grammy for the "Dystopia" title track in the "Best Metal Performance" category in at the 59th annual Grammy Awards in February 2017. Asked what it was like to win a Grammy with MEGADETH and not his main band, which at the time was LAMB OF GOD, Chris said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "When even the rumors or the hints at or the thought of LAMB OF GOD winning a Grammy [first started spreading], that was never on our list [of things we were looking to accomplish]. In fact, we were — I wouldn't say opposed to it, but we did not put any weight whatsoever into possibly getting one of those things. As we got nominated, I remember Randy [Blythe, LAMB OF GOD singer] boycotting it and being, like, 'This is bullshit. Fuck this,' all that punk rock [way of looking at things]… To me, I kind of rode the fence there. I understood where people like Randy were, like, 'This is bullshit,' and we've been watching this for years, and you see the wrong people get nominated and the wrong people win all the time. So there is a kind of a bit of hokeyness to it. But to be nominated and be able to maybe tell your parents, like, 'Hey, these past 30 years where you thought whatever I was doing, this is real,' 'cause their generation had a different view of that. So it does mean something, there is some credibility to be taken away from that, but that was never something that we aimed for. And I was telling somebody this the other day as well, we were nominated, I don't even know how many times. I'm not sure if that's happening anymore. But we went two or three times, and I think two of the three times that we went, MEGADETH was also nominated."

Adler continued: "My history with MEGADETH goes way further back than me joining the band in 201[5]. When I was 14 years old, I was on a skate ramp, and it was at the time of trading cassettes or whatever, and everybody had all these punk rock bands on it, 7 SECONDS, CIRCLE JERKS, T.S.O.L., and somebody had put a MEGADETH song on one of these cassettes, and I was, like, 'Who is this? Who is this?' And that one song, and then my finding out more about the band, buying the records and all that stuff, that band singularly put a point on my horizon, which was, 'That is what I want to do with my life.' MEGADETH defined everything about what I wanted to do and be a musician, in that style, in that vein, the whole thing. So, coming around to it and actually being in the band, and then 'Dystopia' itself, when [MEGADETH leader] Dave [Mustaine] asked me to do it, I was in Los Angeles recording the drums for '[VII:] Sturm Und Drang', the LAMB record, and I got a call at, like, five in the morning. He's an early bird, and he is, like, 'Hey, Chris.' We had met years ago and gotten along fairly well. We weren't penpals or anything, but he's, like, 'Hey, I remember hanging out with you and you're cool. And now a lot of people are telling me a lot of good things about you, and I was wondering if you'd like to make a thrash record with me,' which was, like, I was jumping up and down. They had recently put out 'Super Collider', which I think was a big disappointment to the [fan]base. And I was, like, 'Yes, I wanna get you back on track.' So I'm finishing up a couple tours, and then he flies me to Nashville, rents a house for, like, three months, and it's just me and him for that entire time. At the end of those three months — I think it was three months; maybe two and a half — that's when Kiko [Loureiro, guitar] was brought in. I was there when he was going through, like, 'I don't know who should play guitar. I don't know this.' And so Kiko comes in at the very end to do solos. Dave Ellefson comes in at the very end to do bass. But basically Dave [Mustaine] and I wrote that entire record. And there were parts of it where I was, like, 'This should be heavier, this should be heavier.' I was really pushy about it, but I think he appreciated that at the time. And the songs are awesome. Clearly, it went on to do great things.

"To answer your question, I was never disappointed that we did not win a Grammy in LAMB OF GOD, and I was completely thrilled that I won with MEGADETH, because even when LAMB OF GOD would go to the Grammys, I would sit there and hope that MEGADETH won it, because they had been nominated, like, 12 times, and in my mind they deserved all 12," Chris added. "So for me to be a part of it and to get it actually probably meant more than if we had gotten one in LAMB OF GOD, because the mindset within that project [LAMB OF GOD] was, 'This [Grammy stuff] is all kind of B.S.'"

Back in December 2022, Chris was asked by Jonathan Montenegro's "My 3 Questions To" series if he received a Grammy statuette for his work on "Dystopia". He responded: "The ceremony itself I did not attend. And that was kind of a good and mutual decision in that Dave [Mustaine] and myself agreed that for Dirk [Verbeuren, current MEGADETH drummer] to feel like he was part of the band and Dave to be supportive of that, he should be the one there. And I had no problem with that. In fact, I was the one that recommended Dirk for the position. So I thought it was great. And they were cool enough to send me my own [Grammy Award] with my name on it. So it's good stuff all the way around. So I was very happy, clearly, with that."

Adler took part in most of MEGADETH's live shows in support of "Dystopia" between January and May of 2016. On those shows in late 2015 and early 2016 where Adler was unable to perform with MEGADETH, he was temporarily replaced by Tony Laureano (ex-DIMMU BORGIR, NILE, ANGELCORPSE),the veteran extreme-metal skinsman who had worked as the band's drum tech since 2011. Since May 2016, MEGADETH has utilized the services of Verbeuren, the Belgian-born-and-now-Los-Angeles-based drummer who had previously played with SOILWORK for more than a decade.

Less than five years ago, Chris talked about how he landed the MEGADETH gig in an interview with Saint Virus Bar. He said: "I'm in L.A. I'm recording drums for ['VII: Sturm Und Drang']. We had been on tour in 2005 with MEGADETH. And I get a call really early in the morning — like, six in the morning. And it is Dave Mustaine's guitar tech, a guy named Willie G who I became good friends with along the tour; a great guy. And Willie's, like, 'Hey, your phone's gonna ring in about five minutes, and you should answer it.' I'm, like, 'Okay. Sure.' And the phone rings in five minutes, and it's Dave. And Dave's, like, 'Hey, I enjoyed touring with you. Good chat now and then.' He's not a particularly social guy on tour, but we did hang out a couple of times for breakfast or whatever. And he's, like, 'There's a lot of people that I really trust that tell me you're somebody that I think I should be talking to right now. I'd really like to go back and make a pretty sick thrash record, and I'm interested in having you be a part of that, if you'd like to be.' And it was a 'Candid Camera' kind of moment. 'Is something happening?' It really was the band that changed my life, and now I'm on a phone call that's about to change my life again."

Dirk was recommended for the MEGADETH job by Adler, who called Verbeuren "probably [one of the] top three drummers in the world."

During a July 2016 press conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, Mustaine said that Adler was never a full-time member of MEGADETH and was merely "a session guy" for the "Dystopia" album and some of the subsequent shows. "It was what you could call 'work for hire,'" he said.

Four months earlier, Mustaine told the South Orange, New Jersey radio station WSOU that he "thought it was really inspiring being around [Chris] and his positive energy and really optimistic outlook towards life and music in general. It was good for me [and] it was good for the band."

In a 2015 interview with "The Jasta Show", Chris stated about the songwriting sessions for "Dystopia": "When I first heard the demos, it was well played and it was drum machine, drum samples and stuff, and it wasn't really, kind of, my style of playing. It felt like, kind of, what had been going on before, where it was just [hums a basic beat]. And I really wanted to not have to do that. And so, right away, I brought that up [to Dave]. I said, 'Listen, I'm thankful that you're calling me. But are you calling me because somebody is telling you to call me, or are you calling me because you've heard what I've done and you want me to do some of that — at least some of that — on your record. Because this stuff that's on here is not… that's not cool.'"

Adler went on to say that Mustaine was open to suggestions during the songwriting process. "For example, we did a [cover of a] song called 'Foreign Policy' by FEAR — and old punk rock tune — and it was fun," he said. "And it's a punk rock tune. But as we soon as we learned it… We learned it and played it in one day. And I'm throwing in a ton of double bass. And he stops the song in the middle. He's, like, 'Woah woah woah. What's with the double bass? It's a punk rock song. What are you doing?' I was, like, 'Yeah, it's a punk rock song. But FEAR was a punk rock band. MEGADETH is a metal band. This is MEGADETH. Let's do this the MEGADETH way.' And we kind of moved on to other things. And the next day he came back in. He said, 'You know what?! I was thinking about that last night. You're right, man.' He was, like, 'Let's do this. Let's make it MEGADETH.'"