Megadeth is in full swing with their new album , The Sick, The Dying… and the Dead!, their 16th studio release. Featuring a new drummer and a guest bassist, the band delivers a fast and ferocious album, the successor to Dystopia (2016), which won a Grammy for Best Metal Performance with its title track. In an interview with Wikimetal , Brazilian guitarist Kiko Loureiro spoke about the new project.
The creation of the new album went through a "long journey" with serious obstacles. Shortly after the band began meeting to discuss song ideas, Dave Mustaine was diagnosed with throat cancer and had to cancel some shows, including Megadeth's headlining performance at Rock In Rio 2019 .
There was a pause in the songwriting process for about six months, but the frontman was determined to move forward. The rest of the band made some adjustments and stayed near Mustaine's house, who set up a studio in his residence and continued with the plans , even amidst his chemotherapy treatment.
“It was different, kind of tense… Not in the [band's] relationship, but there was this thing about the cancer treatment, you don't know if Dave is doing well, if he's doing badly, but at the same time, the guy is there, ready to work. If it were someone else, I don't think they would do that, right?” Kiko observed. “There's always that thing, 'Will he be able to sing, how will it be?', there are those fears. But he came back better than before.”
With the songs written, Megadeth returned to the stage with Mustaine recovered before actually starting the recording, but then the pandemic happened and postponed the plans once again. "The guys weren't so sure that recording an entire album remotely would work, right? There was this process of all these doubts, the cancer, the pandemic, being far away, that's the negative side," the guitarist said.
And when the recordings were in their final stages, the band still had to deal with the sexual scandal involving a young woman, starring bassist David Ellefson , who ended up being fired and had all his contributions to the album replaced by Steve Di Giorgio playing from Testament .
This succession of obstacles could have slowed down Megadeth's final result, but The Sick, The Dying… and the Dead! maintains a surprisingly high level and power, perhaps due to the positive aspect mentioned by Kiko Loureiro: the band had more time to refine the results with the "distance from the music". "You come back to it with different ears. And the result we are seeing is super positive," continued the guitarist.
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When giant bands with decades of experience continue to make high-quality albums instead of just revolving around their catalog, the public is always surprised. At 50 years old and part of a band with almost four decades of existence, Kiko Loureiro already receives many questions about the energy of Megadeth, who delivered a technically proficient album with no signs of slowing down in The Sick, The Dying… and the Dead !.
“That’s a comment that comes up quite often, in various forms. ‘Oh, how do you guys have the energy to play and tour?’ Because it’s a message that’s being conveyed, (…) I think the 20-year-olds look and think, ‘Will I still be able to do this when I’m fifty?’ When I see Mick Jagger or Paul McCartney , I also think, ‘Wow, so it’s possible to play and do shows until eighty?’”, he analyzed. “I have a strong feeling about this because there are some songs that are very difficult to play, very fast. And the tendency for bands as the guy gets older is for him to relax, live off his catalog, and if he does new stuff, he does easier stuff. In reality, these new Megadeth songs are more difficult than any song you could choose. And if they’re not more difficult, they’re at the same level [as before].”
Another testament to their desire to surpass what Megadeth and other metal giants have already achieved, the new album also expands into the visual universe with a series of music videos that reveal the origin story of Vic Rattlehead , the band's mascot, in a bloody journey filled with loss, pain, and revenge, filmed in Brazil.
With the direction of Leo Liberti and Rafael Pensado , the four clips already released in the series had all the scenes of Rattlehead's journey filmed in our country, with only the band footage shot in the United States. "It's always good to remember that it was made with Brazilian talent," emphasized the guitarist.
Echoing Dave Mustaine's desire to prove himself capable in the present, rather than being honored for the past, as the frontman recently stated when discussing the band's Grammy, Kiko Loureiro reinforces that there is no greater critic of his own work than himself – and even "more so than the haters".
In the same interview, Mustaine expressed his desire to pass on his knowledge as a metal icon through mentorship, something the Brazilian guitarist already practices with select groups of musicians who want to take the next step in their careers. “What Dave is talking about is when you're on tour with an opening band, and sometimes we [give some pointers], some smaller band that's already an opening act, so the guy already has a record label, manager, already has some contacts. And you can give some pointers on a few things that you can say that can change the band's mindset so that they continue to grow,” he said.
Currently touring the United States, the band has already incorporated “Soldier On” and “We'll Be Back” into the setlist and will test other tracks on the road. “We have a good feeling about showing the new songs, but we know we're showing new music. You're competing, if we can use that word, with the band's biggest hits, right? With any band it's like that, [the fans say] 'Cool, new album? Cool, but play that one I like the most, 'Symphony of Destruction' , please'. But you're going to work on that song so that it becomes an important song within the band's catalog,” he said.
When asked which song from the new album he wants to play live at upcoming shows, Kiko Loureiro chose a challenging track: “Night Stalkers,” a collaboration between Megadeth and Ice-T. “It’s quite fast, it’s going to be challenging to play live, not that it’s going to be fun (laughs). I think the thing about playing new songs at shows is cool because there’s a challenge, you have to learn the song again, remember it, because people think that just because you recorded it you can start playing it anytime, and no, you have to study the song, remember it, practice the parts,” he explained. “And also to get that audience response in the moment and see if the song works live, because there are songs that are nice to listen to but don’t work live. And there are songs that surprise you.”
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