Megadeth's countdown to extinction

In 2025, a time of megastadiums in megacities for megastars, and ticket prices that have become calculable as a proportion of income, we have to be at breaking point. It’s pretty simple folks: are you now being asked to feel lucky for having secured a ticket for many hundreds of pounds? Will you see the band as anything more than tiny people in the distance? Did you accept or miss out on the option to go Platinum for the t-shirt, cup and spoon experience? When you got there how much time are you going to spend watching the screens versus the tiny people? Will the sound enter you head on, or bouncing some way from the back wall and the roof? Will you dance with a group of strangers who briefly become your best friends, or will you bob your head in the seat while a stream of people traipse past carrying or about to evacuate their drinks?

We’ve been here before in the 1970s at a point when rock, especially AOR, dominated the airwaves and promotors looked to sports stadiums and exhibition halls to corral the growing audience. Although it was obviously a state of excess, the interested parties called it progress, but it met its limits when (let’s just capitalise it) Punk, on both sides of the Atlantic, said no thank you and pointed out that more was actually less. Barriers to access and entry were all challenged with the result being an explosion of venues, the return of day time gigs with lower age limits, fair prices, and, perhaps crucially, access to the stage for all. Proficiency may have gone out of the window along with the five-minute lute solos but fun, and levelling freedoms were back. Do it yourself.

And this was Heavy Metal’s great inheritance. In many odd ways, 80s Metal was both a continuation and a conservative reaction to Punk. Younger, shyer and more polite than their Punk elders, they still rubbed shoulders, played the same circuit, but they never lost (or, like John Lydon, pretended to lose) their awe of their elder siblings’ record collections. Gatefolds? Yes. Concepts? Yes, please. Elves? Pass me the lute!

Punk’s extroversion ensured playing with and to friends came first, and skills came later (third or fourth album if they lasted), but some mixture of awkwardness and introversion ensured that proficiency was at the centre of the Metal value system and the bands only emerged from their bedrooms when they could not be embarrassed. And, my god, when they emerged, did they want to prove themselves.

Inspired and awed by (what ranks as the worst acronym to ever survive its first utterance) the NWOBHM (that’s the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, folks), the long hairs in the US stayed cooped up longer to realise in Thrash Metal the kinds of speeds and heaviness previously only associated with military hardware.

Four bands held sway, the Big Four (like the G7 with double kick drums): Metallica, Anthrax, Slayer and Megadeth. Their origin stories require a thesis so just know this: a cantankerous redheaded guitarist with substance issues called Dave was sacked from Metallica following a dog-related fight. Dave threatened that he would form a band that was faster and heavier than Metallica and did just that. And although oddly Dave never openly aspired to the word, he gathered armies of fans who said that Megadeth were also “better”.

Given this is the farewell tour to the army and the proportion of their t-shirts and patches on display, it is incredible that Megadeth take the stage as the support act to look-mum-no-tunes / what-Kneecap-said Disturbed. It means the set is short but fantastically to the point, with the track balance pushed towards early 90s Thrash peak.

Without fanfare, dry ice or pyrotechnics, Megadeth stroll on to the tight chugs of “Skin o’ my Teeth” from Countdown to Extinction. If you’re here for showbiz, it’s kept to the minimum: a handful of arcing hair sweeps (flaunt it if you’ve got it), Quo-like synchronised guitar pointing, and a brief appearance from the band’s skeletal mascot.

The glory is in the tight interplay of the guitars, each switching between percussive crunch-punch and the cackling sneering spider-crawl of the lead. It’s some kind of miracle that such a tight technical sound has remained recognisably Megadeth over the multiple line-up changes, and, as they shift into MTV fave “Hangar 18”, which is about 80% guitar part and 20% song, the lock-step virtuosity allows you to forget the hallowed status of the musicians that wrote it.

Dave Mustaine is clearly the kind of band leader who both creates and solves the problems of line-up change and endearingly the band have a few biographical chuggers that have addressed his issue over the decades. “Angry Again” pops out tonight.

It’s as if the course Megadeth was determined by Mustaine’s own exit from Metallica. “How dare you kick my dog” is a fine sentiment but it’s not quite the decisive spur to action as the determining mantra: “Now I’ll show you what I can do”. Yes, this has led to hectoring taskmastering and created multiple casualties but quality control and album count have remained high, particularly when you compare them to their contemporaries.

Having said that, the pre-spat material has little to recommend it, except, perhaps, maybe, if you think about it too little/too much, some idyllic prelapsarian view of teen paradise? No. The set moves towards its conclusion with the Metallica era song “Mechanix” which, with its adolescent innuendo-laden car/sex fixation (pumping, pistons etc) really should have been driven from showroom to scrapyard. It remains rubbish.

Dave Mustaine, however, has grown. It’s tempting to say that he travelled the full gamut of emotions from cantankerous and tetchy to curmudgeonly and testy, if he didn’t actually show genuine gratitude to the old fans and even some wonder that he’s still attracting new ones. His wry smile almost breaks into a full beam.

“Peace Sells” and “Holy Wars” say much about why Megadeth matter as a band. The visuals and the bassline of the first may have helped MTV convince a generation that it was the arbiter of cool but mealy-mouthed grouching has never been done better. It’s the sound of a small, annoyed, decent person railing against massive injustice, which is why it continues to get played. It manages to be funny, serious and desperate. “What do you mean I don’t support your system / I go to court when I have to”. I’m not saying it’s poetry but it perfectly captures the voice of powerless people protesting. Oh, and that bassline, those squeals!

“Holy Wars” might be the last word in what Thrash guitar was trying to do. Its tight bounce is ridiculously good; so good that, although it shouldn’t, it nearly makes you laugh. Musically, it has a series of nice ideas that pile up to a wide-eyed breathless conclusion. And although we wouldn’t be well served in looking to Thrash lyrics for inspiration, there has always been something moving in the naïve simplicity of “Killing for religion: something I don’t understand”. It ends the set tonight. Disturbed, take note.

While UK Metal was about fantasizing over the realities of a country on the skids and US Thrash was always about standing up to the bullies of Reagan’s jock-o-culture, both offered escape routes, belonging and safe outlets for the anger of kids who were always nice before they were cool. It took almost 10 years, multiple albums, grafting and the gaze of MTV to turn 80s backroom DIY into stadium culture. That’s a lot of connections made, a lot of fun, a lot of t-shirts.

And you might say that we’re just at the end of another cycle that will renew but the world that created Thrash simply does not exist anymore. Grassroots music venues in the UK are closing at a rate of one a week; few can afford or choose to host no name bands and their group of friends. Technology has transformed bedrooms into something between a multi-screened entertainment distraction trap and a computer-generated recording studio for a solo artist, a far cry from the incubation space for talent that MUST emerge in the light to congregate and collaborate.

While a connected world means it’s far easier to meet and share enthusiasms with people from anywhere, the intensity and wonder of meeting someone in your own locale who shares the same is disappearing.

You have a few chances left to catch Megadeth in 2026. Their final and self-titled album drops in January featuring Dave Mustaine’s cap-tipping tribute to old band mates and agitators Metallica with a cover of his part-penned “Ride The Lightning”. Forty years is a long time to carry the emotion that forged a career and it says a lot about the glorious intensity and mess of human relationships created and broken in bands. The canine-kicking days are happily over but, sorry dog-lovers, losing the friction and sparks that occur when people get together might be too high a price to pay.