The writing of the new album was discussed by Mustaine in an interview
Megadeth 's Dave Mustaine has confirmed he's writing the follow-up album to Dystopia . When asked about the musical direction the new album will take, Mustaine replied that he wasn't sure. "If you want me to say what the album will sound like, it sounds like a combination of everything. It's the music I've been writing."
“Whenever I write a riff, if I don’t like it, I don’t record it,” he explained. “If I record it, I save it. If I don’t use it now, I’ll use it at some point. So a lot of things on the album… There’s a finished song left over from Dystopia that I had forgotten about.”
“When you’re in the studio writing 16 songs and working hard every day, some things slip through the cracks,” he said. “ Kiko [ Loureiro , guitarist] has already participated in the writing. Dirk [ Verbeuren , drummer] before him. David Ellefson [bass] will be visiting us soon to play bass.”
Mustaine also responded to whether the political climate influenced the album's lyrics. “I think the state of relations in the world right now is awful – totally awful. People are mean to each other. You talk about who you voted for and you're surrounded by people who don't like your candidate. But they're your friends. Are they going to attack me because of who I voted for?”
“The U.S. is a republic, not a democracy. It’s governed like a democracy. But in a democracy… in my understanding there’s only one leader; we have three arms in government,” he continued. “I don’t want to give a history or political science lecture, but I see so many differences between our government… and even the government of our wonderful neighbors, our Canadian neighbors. There’s a difference. That makes us both unique and beautiful as individuals.”.
But if I'm singing a song saying, 'Oh yeah, we have this and that problem,' you're sitting in Kathmandu [capital of Nepal] and you say, 'I don't know what it's like to have a car. So what if you have car problems?' Some kids see us playing in India, and I love them. I know how much sacrifice they made to see us.”
Mustaine added: “We played in Brazil and a promoter was a bad guy who was charging $275 for a ticket. I found out and got angry. We fired the guy and never worked with him again. The cost of living there was three months' work just to pay for those tickets.”
"So I toned down the political tone so that we're all on the same page. To talk about things that affect us as individuals, not so much as citizens of any government or nation. Because why put up an unnecessary wall between us, right?"
READ ALSO: Megadeth: listen to the unreleased version of “Wake Up Dead”.