MEGADETH Drummer Talks About Decision To Re-Record Previously Released Songs For 'TH1RT3EN'

Peter Hodgson of Australia's Tone Deaf recently conducted an interview with MEGADETH drummer Shawn Drover. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Tone Deaf: To me, ["TH1RT3EN"] almost sounds like an album that MEGADETH could have made after "Countdown To Extinction" in the early 90s if they went in a different direction to where they went on "Youthanasia".

Drover: I've gotten a lot of different comments about what people perceive this album to sound like. Some think it's a real modern-sounding record, some people think it's a real old-sounding record. But we just go in there and crank out the best songs we can, and ultimately the fans create that perception of where they see everything fitting in, ultimately. For me they just sound like the new songs.

Tone Deaf: There are several songs on "TH1RT3EN""Black Swan", "Millennium Of The Blind", "New World Order" that have previously existed as demos or bonus tracks. How did you approach those?

Drover: Dave [Mustaine, MEGADETH mainman] came up with the idea of possibly rerecording "Millennium Of The Blind" and "New World Order", because they were only recorded as demos, and then they were included on the "Youthanasia" re-release, I believe it was. And I love both of those songs, especially "New World Order". There's something about that song that I just absolutely love. So when Dave initially brought the idea up, I was the guy who really went to bat for those two songs because I thought they would fit on this record. Even though they were recorded twenty years ago, I thought they would sit really well with what we were creating at the time. I thought that to rerecord those songs with great production was something we hadn't done before. I think it turned out very well and I think the fans are going to dig it. We certainly dig it and we hope the fans do as well. And for me it was a lot of fun re-recording something that was recorded twenty years ago. It was cool!

Tone Deaf: To be honest, when I saw the track listing and recognized those songs, my first thought was, "Oh man Really?" And in the back of my mind I was a bit cynical about whether they'd fit, but they totally do.

Drover: It does fit, dude, it really does. And the same for "Black Swan". We originally released that to the fan club for um

Tone Deaf: "United Abominations".

Drover: "United Abominations", yeah. And, to me, that song was never really finished. Although it was recorded it wasn't fine-tuned as good as it is now. Now I think it's a much better song, and it ties in with the album. For me, that song was unfinished business. I liked the song but I knew we could make it better, and once we broke it out again we did make it better. So, ultimately, I think we did a really good thing with that.

Read the entire interview from Tone Deaf.

New version of "Black Swan" (2011):

Original version of "Black Swan" (2007):