Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine has opened up about his decision to include a version of “Ride the Lightning” on the band’s final album. He also addressed his former Metallica bandmates’ reaction.
Mustaine explained why he chose to record his own take on the Metallica title track — a song for which he received a co-writing credit following his 1983 departure from the band. He also described what he was hoping to achieve with the recording.
“Well, it was kind of closing the circle, I guess, knowing that this is gonna be the end,” Dave Mustaine said. “When we made the decision to add that song, we were about two-thirds of the way done with the record, and we’ve always tried to add a cool cover song to our records. And this wasn’t a cover — it was a version of a song that I wrote done by one of the other writers.”
He went on to describe the effort that went into making sure the new version stood on its own.
“So it was interesting to do that. And I wanted to make it as good or better than the Metallica version,” he continued. “So how do you do that? You gotta play it as good. You gotta sing it as good. You gotta make it as exciting or better. So we sped it up. We spiced up the solo. We spiced up the drums, and I think the song has gotten really good response from the fans.”
Mustaine then addressed the reaction — or lack thereof — from his former bandmates.
“We haven’t heard from anybody from [the Metallica] camp, whether they like it or not, and that’s not why I did it,” he said. “I did it to close the circle with us. We’ve done a lot of great things together, the three of us [James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich and Dave], and if this is the narrowing of the aperture on my career, I wanna go out on top.”
The silence from Metallica’s camp comes against the backdrop of a farewell run that has already made history for Megadeth. The story behind “Ride the Lightning” itself stretches back more than four decades to the earliest days of both bands.
Megadeth’s self-titled seventeenth album, which houses the reworked “Ride the Lightning,” arrived on January 23, 2026. It became the band’s first-ever number one album on the Billboard 200 and also topped the charts in Australia. The milestone is notable given that Megadeth had never reached the top spot in over forty years and sixteen prior studio releases, making the achievement all the more significant as the band closes out its recording career.
Mustaine co-wrote “Ride the Lightning” back in 1983, before he was ousted from Metallica and before the song was ever recorded. He did not perform on the original version, which appeared on Metallica’s 1984 album of the same name. That absence makes his decision to finally record his own rendition more than four decades later a full-circle moment tied directly to his own songwriting history.
The final Megadeth album was not without leftover material. Mustaine has disclosed that at least two additional songs, “Bloodlust” and “Farewell My Love,” were recorded during sessions for the record but did not make the final tracklist. A possible third unreleased track is also rumored to exist. He has given no indication that the songs will see an official release.
The album’s success and its emotional undertones tie directly into Megadeth’s farewell tour, which Mustaine has framed as the definitive end of the band’s touring career. The trek has already spanned multiple continents, with the band recently confirming stops in Los Angeles and additional international dates. This underscores the finality Mustaine referenced when discussing his desire to “go out on top.”
