MEGADETH Made Its Best Records Under Pressure

Tristan Pratt conducted an interview with MEGADETH bassist David Ellefson and guitarist Kiko Loureiro at this year's Bloodstock Open Air festival, which was held August 9-12 at Catton Hall, Walton-On-Trent, West Midlands, United Kingdom. You can watch the chat below.

Asked about the overwhelmingly positive response to MEGADETH's latest album, 2016's "Dystopia", Ellefson said: "There's these albums of ours that get sort of always flushed out to the top — 'Peace Sells', 'Rust In Peace', 'Dystopia' — and these are albums, ironically, that were never born out of the high life and the good times; they were born out of, 'Oh, shit. We're completely screwed. The band's falling apart. You think this is even gonna work? If it doesn't work this time, we're done.' That back against the wall inside the band has produced our best records, or at least I would say the records the fans relate to the most."

He continued: "Heavy metal fans are people that have desires and dreams and yearning for other things, and oftentimes they feel like they can't achieve those dreams, either through the boss they work for or the family they're in, whatever it is, and I think that's the relational dynamic between heavy metal and bands that make this music. And I think when we are in that same position, we often make our songs that resonate the clearest to our fans."

MEGADETH recently completed a North American tour with MESHUGGAH and will play arenas later in the year as the support act for German hard rock veterans SCORPIONS.

MEGADETH is planning on returning to the studio at the end of the year to begin work on the follow-up to "Dystopia".

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

"Dystopia" was the first album to feature Loureiro, best known for his work with ANGRA.