MEGADETH's DAVE MUSTAINE Says A Lot Of Newer Bands Aren't Ready To Go On The Road

In a brand new interview with Reverb.com, MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine was asked for his opinion the current state of metal music. He responded: "I think there are a lot of exciting new bands out there, but I also think that inasmuch as there are great bands out there that need to be heard, they may not be ready to go on the road. I think that's one of the things that's hurting these young, talented musicians: they get ready to go on the road, they make a bunch of empty promises, and [they] go on the road and crash and burn."

He continued: "You have no idea how many new Randy Rhoads there are out there or other fantastic talents that we're not going to hear because they weren't ready.

"I think the new musicians, a lot of them are good players, especially with the advent of technology for people to record and stuff like that, but there are also a lot of people who aren't mature enough to get in a bus and leave their home for six weeks and ride around, slogging it out."

Earlier this year, Mustaine said that younger artists aren't being afforded the same opportunities that MEGADETH was because record labels cannot afford to sign and develop acts like they used to.

"There are a lot of new bands out there that unfortunately don't get to make the same decisions that we and other bands did because the nature of the music business has totally changed," he told Paste. "A lot of bands, when they wanna 'make it,' they go from the rehearsal room to the studio to the stage to getting signed and being a legit band in a really brief time, and they don't have the opportunity to really develop or to learn what it's really like on the road.

"In every professional business, such as the sports world, for example, they have rookie camp where they tell you there's gonna be gold diggers, and you're gonna have some of your so-called friends come out of nowhere and ask for loans, and you need to talk like this and say that," he continued. "Obviously I never had any media training. [Laughs] But some of these younger bands, I think it's disgraceful the way the labels are prostituting them out, because good songs need to germinate. You don't plant a field and harvest it the next day. You can cram for a test, but you can't cram for a crop."

As previously reported, MEGADETH will team up with AMON AMARTH, METAL CHURCH and HAVOK for a U.S. tour in the fall. The trek, which is expected to include an as-yet-undisclosed fifth band, will last for five weeks.

MEGADETH's last full U.S. tour took place earlier in the year and featured support from SUICIDAL TENDENCIES, CHILDREN OF BODOM and HAVOK.

MEGADETH is continuing to tour in support of its fifteenth album, "Dystopia", which shifted 49,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending January 28. In terms of pure album sales, it opened with 48,000 copies, marking MEGADETH's highest-charting album since 1992's "Countdown To Extinction" debuted and peaked at No. 2 on the chart dated August 1 of that year. "Dystopia" also logged the group's best sales week since 2007, when "United Abominations" landed at No. 8 with first-week sales of 54,000.