Megadeth is currently working on a new album, and apparently, it’s getting ‘frustrating.’
In a new interview with X Spaces, frontman Dave Mustaine shared updates about the upcoming album. He revealed that every member of the band was gone and he was all by himself. “Right now I’m in the studio working with [engineer] Chris Rakestraw. And everybody else is gone. Teemu [Mäntysaari] is in Switzerland and James [LoMenzo] and Dirk [Verbeuren] are in Los Angeles.”
“So it’s just me here by myself with Chris. And Chris leaves tomorrow to go on a vacation, and I’m working up to the last second today to get as much done as I can before he takes off because we won’t be starting again until he returns somewhere around New Year’s Day. And at that point, it’s only a matter of a couple weeks before everybody converges on to the studio. And for that I’m pumped. And you guys are gonna be excited,” he continued, adding that it “has been frustrating, because I wanna be farther along than I am right now. But that’s quite all right.”
“When you write original music, you’ve always gotta start at the first step,” Mustaine further explained. “And that’s what I’ve been doing my whole career. So, before we did this, I had all four of us listen to the entire catalog — every single song; 205 songs — and I wanted to make sure they knew chord progressions, lyric patterns, all kinds of stuff like that, so that they would hear tempos and starts and stops and everything to help them be able to songwrite and contribute also.”
“And it’s been really great because Teemu is contributing, Dirk is contributing, like last time, James contributed back in the day and he’s got more stuff coming on this record,” the frontman added.
Megadeth hasn’t publicly announced that they were working on a new album but made it clear in different interviews. In March this year, Mäntysaari shared what fans would expect to hear in the new album: “Maybe you’ll hear some ‘Rust in Peace’ vibes, or maybe some things like the last two. Either way, the direction Megadeth is going now is good, and the vibe within the band seems to be in a very good place.”
In September 2022, Megadeth’s latest album ‘The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead!’ debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 in its first week of sales. The album also claimed the top spot on several charts, including Top Album Sales, Top Current Albums Sales, Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums, and Top Hard Rock Albums.
