MEGADETH bassist David Ellefson has uploaded a nine-and-a-half-minute video clip featuring behind-the-scenes footage from the band’s June 15 appearance at Hellfest in Clisson, France. Check it out below. Source: Blabbermouth.net
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According to an update from the band, MEGADETH is confirmed to play five shows in the Asian Pacific Rim this summer. Dates are as follows:
July
29 – Manila, Philippines – World Trade Center (Hall D)
August
1 – Bangkok, Thailand – BITEC Bangna
3 – Beijing, China – Tango Live House
5 – Taipei, Taiwan – ATT Show Box
7 – Fort Canning Park, Singapore – Fort Canning Green
Go to this location for ticket information.
As previously reported, two new dates have been added to Megadeth’s South American tour this fall. The band will perform the album Countdown To Extinction in its entirety at Via Funchal in Sao Paulo, Brazil on September 5th, and due to the first show being sold out, a second show has now been added in Chile. Megadeth will perform select songs from the album Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying? at Teatro Caupolican in Santiago, Chile on September 8th.
Om June 10th, Megadeth performed in front of 85,000 people at the UK’s famous Download Festival in “the sun”! Bassist David Ellefson reports from the festival below:
Megadeth performed:
‘Never Dead’
‘Head Crusher’
‘Hangar 18’
‘She-Wolf’
‘Trust’
‘Poison Was The Cure’
‘Sweating Bullets’
‘Whose Life (Is It Anyways?)’
‘Public Enemy No. 1’
‘Symphony Of Destruction’
‘Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying’
‘A Tout Le Monde’
‘Angry Again’
‘Holy Wars… The Punishment Due’
Source: Bravewords.com
Tina of Total Rock conducted an interview with MEGADETH bassist David Ellefson at this year’s Download festival, which was held June 8-10 at Donington Park in Leicestershire, United Kingdom. You can now watch the chat below.
MEGADETH‘s setlist was as follows:
01. Never Dead
02. Head Crusher
03. Hangar 18
04. She-Wolf
05. Trust
06. Poison Was the Cure
07. Sweating Bullets
08. Whose Life (Is It Anyways?)
09. Public Enemy No. 1
10. Symphony of Destruction
11. Peace Sells
12. A Tout Le Monde
13. Angry Again
14. Holy Wars… The Punishment Due
MEGADETH was among the nominees for the 54th annual Grammy Awards, which was held on February 12 at Staples Center in Los Angeles. The band’s tenth Grammy nomination was for its single “Public Enemy No. 1”, off MEGADETH‘s latest album, “TH1RT3EN”, which came out on November 1, 2011.
“Public Enemy No. 1” actually marked the second Grammy nomination for music from “TH1RT3EN”, as the song “Sudden Death” was first unveiled in the 2010 video game “Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock” and received a “Best Metal Performance” nod.
Interview:
Preparing to hit the stage:
Source: Blabbermouth.net
Niclas Müller-Hansen of Sweden’s Metalshrine recently conducted an interview with former MEGADETH guitarist Marty Friedman. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.
Metalshrine: Have you stayed in touch with [MEGADETH mainman] Dave Mustaine and the other guys through the years?
Friedman: Not all that much. Not really that much, but not zero. We’ve been in touch a few times and it’s very friendly and I have no problem in the world with them and wish them nothing but success and hopefully they feel the same.
Metalshrine: Have you listened to any of the stuff they did after you left?
Friedman: Actually, I heard the one record they made right after I left and that’s the last most recent thing I heard of theirs. That’s about it, really.
Metalshrine: I read that one of the reasons that you left was that MEGADETH wasn’t aggressive enough. Is that true?
Friedman: Oh yes, that’s totally true. Totally, totally true. At the time when I left it was the beginning of 2000, but I actually told the guys that I was gonna leave in the middle of ’99, but that’s another story. I left in 2000 and at that time every other band was just about a thousand times more aggressive than we were. At the time you had, I guess, KORN and MARILYN MANSON and even LIMP BIZKIT had stuff that was deeply heavy and our stuff just sounded thin and small and to my ear it just sounded really dated and very old-fashioned and traditional. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of those things and in fact a lot of people who are into heavy metal really like that traditional sound and don’t want it to change, so that’s a very valid point and I understand it, especially since I’ve been a RAMONES fan since I was a baby. When they changed just the slightest thing, I got all crazy, so I understand that, but with a name like MEGADETH and all the other bands are just blowing you away with this big deep heavy sound that is way scarier and way harder and more aggressive than a band called MEGADETH, it was not turning me on anymore. I was like, “Let’s do one thing or the other! Let’s either get friggin’ heavier or let’s just be a little bit more marketable, because right now, we’re kind of an underground band and we shouldn’t be. We’ve got so much great potential within the four members of the band that we shouldn’t be an underground traditional metal band.” That’s not where I wanted to go, but maybe that’s where they wanted to go. It was just a completely musical decision why I left the band and it had absolutely nothing to do with any personal problems. I was just seeing all these other bands and I love aggressive music, but it’s gotta be really fucking aggressive. I hear stuff now like DECAPITATED and stuff like that. I would’ve wanted to play stuff more in that vein than what we were doing. I thought, maybe our first couple of records when I joined the band were kind of aggressive for that time, but there was so much stuff after it that I would say was trumping us in that department. I know music’s not a competition and I wasn’t competing, but I just thought that other bands were doing what I thought we should do better. I don’t know why we were always in the mid-tempo kind of ’80s thrash metal zone and we were all beyond that, but that’s really what I meant back then and I totally meant it.
Metalshrine: About doing something different, did you listen to METALLICA‘s “Lulu” project?
Friedman: Ahhh, I think I heard one song where Lou Reed is, like, talking or something. I didn’t listen to it thinking that I was gonna be asked about it, I just remember, “What’s this?” Was he rapping or was it spoken-word?
Metalshrine: Yeah, I guess it’s more like spoken-word throughout the album.
Friedman: Yeah, I don’t know. I have no idea.
Metalshrine: But as a musician, could you see yourself doing something that’s totally different from what you’ve done before in a way to push things forward?
Friedman: I absolutely believe it and I absolutely get it and I understand it. The thing with METALLICA is that they’re such a great band and they’ve got so much great stuff already in their history, that they could just like fart on a record and people would at least wanna see why they’re doing it, you know. They’ve got so much great stuff and they’re allowed to be experimental if they want. I have a lot of weird trippy stuff that I haven’t released that maybe if I was in a band like METALLICA, I would have the opportunity to release it, but I kinda keep my stuff a little bit more to how I’d like to represent myself, but I think all musicians have a lot of experimental stuff and that’s how you grow. I give them total props and total credit for always being experimental and that’s why they’re always one step ahead of the curve in the world of heavy metal and that’s why they’re like THE ROLLING STONES of heavy metal. They’ve always continued to reinvent themselves while keeping that great sound, but I can’t really speak for that whole “Lulu” album. I don’t think they’re gonna lose fans with it, but they have fans of their old stuff who are not gonna like it as much most likely, but if they like it, that’s all that matters. It really is. Especially when you have a history of success behind you. It takes balls to do something that you know your hardcore fans are not gonna like. It’s easy to preach to the converted. It’s easy to do that and it’s fun to do it because everyone’s gonna love you and it’s great, but it takes balls to take a risk and even more balls to do it in public and release it so I give them credit.
Read the entire interview from Metalshrine. Source: Blabbermouth.net
Hal Leonard has released the official, note-for-note matching guitar tab book for “TH1RT3EN”, the latest full-length album from influential heavy metal band MEGADETH. It is now available for purchase from MusicDispatch.com.“TH1RT3EN” sold 42,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to land at position No. 11 on The Billboard 200 chart. The CD was recorded at MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine‘s Vic’s Garage studio in San Marcos, California with producer Johnny K (full name: John Karkazis), who has previously worked with DISTURBED, SEVENDUST, MACHINE HEAD and STAIND, among others. The artwork was once again created by artist John Lorenzi, who worked on the last two MEGADETH studio albums, 2007’s “United Abominations” and 2009’s “Endgame”, as well as the band’s 2007 box set, “Warchest”.
“TH1RT3EN” marks the recorded return of bassist David Ellefson who was part of the band’s classic lineup from 1983 to 2002. In a move that delighted the band’s legion of diehards, Ellefson returned to performing live with MEGADETH in early 2010 and has remained a fixture on the stage ever since. This is the first time Ellefson has played on a MEGADETH record since 2002’s “Rude Awakening”.
“TH1RT3EN” has sold 112,000 copies in the United States since its November 2011 release.
Source: Blabbermouth.net
Last September, MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine underwent surgery for stenosis, a neck and spine condition that he says was caused by years of headbanging.
Earlier this month, Artisan News spoke to Mustaine and asked him about how he’s doing eight months after the surgery. “It’s good,” he said. “Leading up to it, it was horrible. But I think probably the thing was the most painful was the stuff people were saying. Like I wasn’t really hurt and I was faking it. I was hurt. And when they pulled that bone fragment out of my neck… It’s one thing to have a bulging disc and have stuff fused together, but when they find broken pieces of bone in your spinal cord, that stuff causes pain. And I wasn’t gonna let it affect me or keep me from going on stage and playing. I probably hurt myself more by going out there like that, but, you know… I don’t know if I’m just stubborn or what, but I was always taught the show must go on, and I went up into the point where I had to be hospitalized. Which is kind of rock and roll, if you think about it. [laughs]”
He added, “There are, every once in a while, some sharp pains and stuff like that, if I move it wrong, but it’s completely healed. And I don’t have any fear. I do have a little bit of apprehension when I’m getting out on stage and I start to get too revved up. ‘Cause it’s really easy, once that button turns on, for you to go to a place you don’t wanna physically go to — you’re hanging over the cliff ’cause you’re headbanging too much.”
As to how he thinks his stage performance exacerbated his condition, Mustaine said, “There’s one move I used to do; I used to always snap my head back and forth. . . It wasn’t like I was doing it for a dance move or something choreographed or corny like that. It was just a form of expression and I think that’s probably one of the positions that I hurt myself in, ’cause it’s more of a grinding movement.”
Even though Mustaine has fully recovered from his surgery, he does admit that performing live has become more difficult in the months following the procedure. “After the surgery, it’s been harder to sing,” he said. “They said that that would happen. And it’s been harder to sing, which is sad, ’cause I’ve already had… Singing is not my forté. I try my best to do it, but I’m not a great singer, and like I said, they told me that it was gonna get more difficult, and I didn’t believe ’em. So now I’m dealing with it. When I go out there and play, I look at the fans out there and I don’t think, ‘Well, there’s a guy that’s seen me 20 times.’ I think about, ‘What about the person that’s seeing us for the very first time?'”
Speaking to Decibel magazine last November, Mustaine stated about his neck injury, “The way [2011’s Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival] ended, with me being hurt, I knew I was hurt, but I didn’t know how bad. Nobody knew the writing was on the wall. I pretty much thought, ‘Well, I”m hurt, but I’ll just take it easy, have a couple of glasses of wine. I’ll get through it, get a couple of trigger point injections, get an epidural.’ There were a couple of times they gave me a shot in my neck that numbed me up. I saw chiropractors and masseuses all the time. It inevitably gets to the point where you’re starting to take medication, and that’s never good, because if you’re taking something and you never feel the pain… You saw Curt Schilling when he was playing for the Diamondbacks, and Randy Johnson; I can’t remember if [Schilling] was playing for the Diamondbacks that time he had the bloody sock or if he’d gone back to Boston or not yet — [he] did some heroic feat where he had his foot put back together and he went out there and played.”
He added, “I’m an athlete, as a guitar player and as an onstage persona. But as far as being a musician that has to do hurdles — I don’t think most musicians, when they start playing music, think that they’re going to be playing this demanding-type music that those of us who are part of the ‘Big Four’ and all the bands we influenced and kind of created [play]. With the advent of the headbanging — which was not my invention, by any means; I’m not like Al Gore who invented the Internet — there was that whole headbanging thing that came around, it’s hurt a lot us… What is headbanging, anyway? It’s kind of like chronic whiplash syndrome, isn’t it?”
Source : Blabbermouth.net
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Metal Shock Finland (World Assault ) 