The Sound Cellar: MEGADETH: Endgame

Thursday, October 8, 2009

MEGADETH: Endgame

Produced by Dave Mustaine and Andy Sneap

Released: 2009

Tonight Sydney plays host to one of the best double bills of metal ever seen in this city as Megadeth and Slayer unleash their hell one after the other, so what better time than now to take a look at the latest album from the first of those bands? Megadeth was always the most technically gifted and perhaps the most honest of the Big Four --Dave Mustaine has made no secret of the fact that when his band went corporate in the mid-90s it really was at the behest of his label. All that seems like so long ago now (which is true), since over the last decade of new label, a split, a reformation, another new label and several shifts in the second guitar department, Mustaine has drawn closer and closer with each new release to the ultimate vision of technical thrash metal excellence that he achieved with Rust in Peace. Endgame probably isn't quite the masterpiece that album was, but it is the closest they've come so far.

Megadeth leaves you with no illusions about what to expect. The first track is a three minute shred battle between Mustaine and latest recruit Chris Broderick, formerly of Jag Panzer, one of the most shred-obsessed metal bands of all. From here they lock straight into "Time Day We Fight!", another blazing riff and shred fest that pretty well points the way for the entire album. While Mustaine has never completely disappointed in the guitar hero stakes (even his worst records are saved by some blistering fretwork), Endgame is positively ablaze with glorious soloing, probably outdoing even the Friedman-era albums in that respect, and that's saying a lot. For those who love Megadeth purely on those grounds, Endgame will certainly not disappoint.

On other levels too, Endgame succeeds. In general, the songwriting is up there with Mustaine's best. "Headcrusher" is one of the best thrash tracks to have surfaced this year without question, "Bodies" embraces old-school thrash with the chugga-chugga riffs of Countdown to Extinction and "Bite the Hand" and "The Right to Go Insane" are backed by a wicked groove. Lyrically, there's a few clunkers (I'm not particularly fussed on "44 Minutes", for example), but it's clear in tracks like "Endgame" and "How the Story Ends" that the Mustaine worldview is no less pessimistic than it's always been. By the same token, he can still find a place for a song about top-fuel dragsters; the balladesque "Hardest Part of Letting Go... Sealed With a Kiss" really jars the listener out of the experience however. It really seems out of place on an album otherwise crammed with scorching thrash.

This is Megadeth's best album since Rust in Peace. It remains to be seen if they can top it next time, but we can hope they will match it at least.