See the statement.
In an interview with My Global Mind, Megadeth bassist David Ellefson spoke about the songwriting process during the band's darkest periods, while still maintaining contracts with record labels:
"1989 was a very dark year. The band was falling apart, the management was too, and Capitol Records was just sitting around waiting for us to have something. Ironically, we wrote one of the fans' favorite albums, 'Rust In Peace,' around that time. What's interesting is that during another dark and tumultuous period we also wrote another fan favorite, 'Peace Sells... But Who's Buying?' a few years earlier.".
What starts to unsettle an artist is when you realize that it's during your darkest days that you write your best songs. There's always a present call for you to go back to that and recapture it. Unfortunately, as a human being living in the world, you can't always live like that. What made "Rust In Peace" so good is that we wrote it during a dark period but we stayed clean and sober, we recorded it completely sober.
So we went and managed to tour and bring the band to even greater success, sober. Even with “Dystopia,” it was written during a dark period in the band's career, with lineup and management changes. With all those things going on, I think in a strange way it created a mood for these incredible songs.”
