What Makes A Good MEGADETH Riff? DAVE MUSTAINE Responds

In a new interview with "Talk Is Jericho", the podcast hosted by FOZZY frontman and wrestling superstar Chris Jericho, MEGADETH leader Dave Mustaine was asked about the fact that the band's latest album, "Megadeth", contains a lot of songwriting collaborations with MEGADETH's lead guitarist of the past three years, Teemu Mäntysaari. Dave said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Just because somebody has some credit on a record doesn't mean that they wrote a lot of it. Because some of the stuff that we wrote together, I wrote just a little bit, and it says me and him. And in some cases it should probably say Dave and a lot of Teemu. But I've never been hung up on it. It's just ink. What matters is how it tickles your ears. And I hate to be crass on your show, but that's how it's always been with MEGADETH. What does it make you feel like? Do you wanna get motivated?"

Asked what makes a good MEGADETH riff to him, if someone if submitting riffs to him during the songwriting process, Dave said: "What makes a good MEGADETH riff to me? I don't know. I think it's one of those things you feel, you hear. Whenever you listen to somebody's new record and you're going through the tracks and there's that one song that just grabs you by the crotch and you're going, like, 'Wow, that's a good [riff] on that song,' and you're looking for the next one. And you might skip forward after that song. And you might get to the end of the record and say, 'Well, there's only one really good riff on this song,' and go back to that song that had that one riff.

"When I would listen to Michael Schenker's solo albums, he had a terrible habit of picking singers that reminded me of Graham Bonnet," Dave continued. "And his guitar playing is some of the best in the world; there's no argument there. But that doesn't mean that you're gonna be a great songwriter, 'cause you're great player. So, a lot of times you need to hook up with somebody who's gonna put the two pieces together. Like I had heard that with STONE TEMPLE PILOTS, the DeLeo brothers [Robert and Dean], the bass player [Robert] was the connector. And when they would get their songs and their pieces together, he would be the one who would connect all the parts. He would have those little delicious parts that — you know the ones we loved — and they'd put all the pieces together. And I don't know their songs well enough to know what he did and what he didn't do. We were close in the beginning. They went on to greatness, and we talked a little bit over the years after we did that first tour with them. And a lot of great guitar tones and guitar playing out of Dean."

Mustaine told Premier Guitar earlier this year that he was open to songwriting contributions from everyone who was involved with the making of "Megadeth".

"Dirk [Verbeuren, MEGADETH drummer] wrote music. James [LoMenzo, MEGADETH bassist] wrote music. Teemu wrote music," Mustaine noted. "Even our producer chimed in a couple times. Good producers are supposed to do that."

"I believe with James and Dirk and Teemu's ideas, this record had a lot of really fresh ideas," Dave added. "Obviously I have my fingerprints on it, but we're a band."

This past February, Teemu told Chaoszine about his contributions to "Megadeth": "My contribution to this album, first of all, it was kind of a surprise that Dave wanted to include us bandmembers so much. So pretty early on he asked me and the guys if we have some riff ideas and then we should start saving them because at some point we were gonna start recording the album. And so we did. And then we basically started pre-production by listening through the whole MEGADETH catalog, all the songs, including all the bonus tracks and cover tracks, alphabetically, over 200 songs. We listened and we made notes, like what we liked in the songs, what are some of the parts that we could use maybe as an inspiration or a catalyst to inspire ideas for the new album. And Dave was telling us stories, like how he came up with lyrics and little backstories, like how the songs originally came to be. So that was a big inspiration to get the creative minds working. Then we went to studio late in 2024, and then stayed in the studio until '25, August, September. In the studio, we had a really nice setup where it was like this one really big room. One corner had the recording equipment in there, all the amps and whatever you need, a recording booth for acoustic guitars and vocals. And then in one side of the big room, we had all our live equipment, so the full live setup, basically, so we could anytime go there and jam with the guys and come up with these ideas, which is then how a lot of the songs kind of started. We just sat down and maybe had a little snippet of an idea and then developed that together. Or maybe even didn't have any idea, but somebody just started playing and the other guys joined in, and we had the producer recording everything. And then soon we had starting points for a lot of songs."

"Megadeth" debuted at the top of the U.S. album chart after earning 73,000 equivalent album units in the United States in the week ending January 29, according to Luminate. The bulk of that sum was driven by pure album sales (purchases of physical and digital copies of the album),totaling 69,000. The follow-up to "The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead!" was released via Mustaine's Tradecraft imprint on Frontiers Label Group's new BLKIIBLK label.

"Megadeth" also claimed the top spot in Australia (highest previous position No. 2) and Austria (highest previous position No. 8). Other top five spots included No. 2 in Finland (and No. 1 physical),Sweden (plus No. 1 physical; highest previous position No. 9),and Belgium (highest previous position: No. 6); No. 3 in both the U.K. and Germany (highest previous position No. 6); No. 4 in the Netherlands (highest previous position No. 7); and No. 5 in both Italy (highest previous position No. 15) and New Zealand (highest chart position ever).

For its final album, MEGADETH once again worked with Chris Rakestraw, a producer, mixer and engineer who previously worked on MEGADETH's last two LPs, the aforementioned "The Sick, The Dying... And The Dead!" and "Dystopia".