MEGADETH's DAVE MUSTAINE On 'Endgame': 'I've Made The Record Of My Career'

June 25, 2009

Darryl Sterdan of Sun Media recently conducted an interview with MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine. A few excerpts from the chat follow below.

On touring with SLAYER again (as part of of the "Canadian Carnage" run) after so many years:

Mustaine: "This tour's going to be outrageous. It has been quite some time. Because we played when we were so young, it seems like it was just yesterday. I think the fans are going to be excited because it's two very powerful bands."

On whether there's any friendly competition between MEGADETH and SLAYER:

Mustaine: "No. There really isn't any room in my psyche, my id, to think, 'Well, this guy can play better than I can, so I better get out there and shake my ass.' Dude, it's music. I just go out there to have fun and to play. I've been playing a long time. I'm a legendary guitar player. I've got what I want in life. I'm very confident and very content. If every time I go up onstage, I get caught up in trying to steal back my thunder from the guy who was onstage before me, then I never really had any thunder in the first place."

On the upcoming MEGADETH album, "Endgame":

Mustaine: "I've made the record of my career. It's as aggressive as anything I've played in years. It's faster than anything that I've heard in a long time. The record is the best MEGADETH record I've ever done by far. It's my favourite record. I've been playing songs to people and everybody goes — 'Whoo!' or 'Fuck yeah!' That's been the consensus — a lot of whoo-hoos, hugs and fuck yeahs." (Laughs)

On playing new material live:

Mustaine: "We're gonna play one of the songs from the new album — a song called 'Headcrusher'. It's about a medieval torture device. That's by far the most appropriate song for us to play for this audience. It's straightforward, no-nonsense MEGADETH thrash metal."

On MEGADETH's fans and haters:

Mustaine: "I've been through a lot of stuff. I've been pretty open with my fans about it — all that 'a burden shared is a burden lessened' bullshit, I believe in that. Our fans know that they can count on me to be honest with them. I talk to them a lot on my TheLiveLine web site. I think sometimes that I should talk to them a little bit more about stuff that's a little bit more meaty — like political stuff and social issues. But I know if I do that, there's gonna be somebody who's going to take exception with me and make it their life's ambition to tell me I'm wrong. And I've got a couple of stalkers, which is very unfortunate. There's one girl that's following me around saying she's my stepsister and demanding my older sister take a blood-test. It's really disappointing. I'm accessible to the fans ... but dude, my job is not as fun as it used to be."

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