MEGADETH's DIRK VERBEUREN On His Exercise Routine: 'I Do A Lot Of Stretching And Yoga'

In a new interview with Paltrocast With Darren Paltrowitz, MEGADETH drummer Dirk Verbeuren was asked if he has any "routines and stretches and wellness things" that he has to do to prepare for a tour. He responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "These days, yes, I do. I do a lot of stretching and yoga, and not every day, but almost every day I do some fitness, some workouts. It's mostly just so that I'm gonna be in shape for the show and that I can give it my all without hurting myself or without getting too exhausted. That being said, the beginning of a tour is always gonna be a little bit brutal because you always need that first week to kind of acclimatize and get used to playing the whole show again, get used to playing 90 minutes of pretty much uninterrupted metal at a hundred percent. So it's always a little bit of adapting, but once you're kind of in the water, it starts getting easier over time. Like now, we're three weeks in, my body's used to it now, so now it's just about keeping it up. But, of course, when I was younger, I was, like everybody on tour, partying, drinking. Nowadays I haven't been drinking for almost 20 years now. I live pretty clean, just because I feel better that way — my body feels better, my mind feels better. I can be present every day and just give every show the best I can."

When host Darren Paltrowitz noted that "the happiest clean-living people play the angriest music", Dirk said: "I think the thing with metal music, the anger or the aggressiveness of it, it resonated with me as a teenager, because we all go through that kind of angsty phase, figuring out the world. So it really resonated with me. And not only metal, also rap and hip-hop and electronic music. There's all kinds of different things I listened to that kind of got me through that phase of kind of figuring things out. But I think that ultimately it sticks with you for the love of the music because of the musicianship and just the sheer power and energy of it. So I don't see it so much as necessarily aggression in the sense of it's aggressive towards anyone. It's more like we're expressing this energy that's in all of us because in the end, we're all the same."

MEGADETH's latest album, "The Sick, The Dying... And The Dead!", sold 48,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in its first week of release to land at position No. 3 on the Billboard 200 chart. It marked MEGADETH's eighth top 10-charting album. Of "The Sick, The Dying... And The Dead!"'s 48,000 units earned for the week, album sales comprised 45,000, SEA units comprised 3,000 and TEA units comprised a negligible sum.

MEGADETH's previous top 10 entries on the Billboard 200 were "Countdown to Extinction" (No. 2, 1992),"Youthanasia" (No. 4, 1994),"Cryptic Writings" (No. 10, 1997),"United Abominations" (No. 8, 2007),"Endgame" (No. 9, 2009),"Super Collider" (No. 6, 2013) and "Dystopia" (No. 3, 2016).

MEGADETH recently launched the North American "Destroy All Enemies" tour, produced by Live Nation. Support on the 33-city trek, which includes stops in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Boston and St. Louis, is coming from MUDVAYNE and ALL THAT REMAINS. The tour will run throughout the month before wrapping in Nashville, Tennessee on September 28.

Photo credit: Gornoss (courtesy of Season Of Mist)