In the 1980s, a new wave of bands ‘combined heavy metal with the rebellion of punk rock, and speed and thrash metal was born…’ This became ‘a firmly established and distinctive style, featuring odd syncopations, tempo changes, shifting time signatures, ‘ear-twisting’ dissonances, driving doublebass drum rhythms, screaming vocals and a heavily distorted, chunky, mind-numbing guitar tone. It is music taken to its most hyper extreme…’ [3.] Long hair, tight jeans, t-shirts and high-top ‘sneakers’ (in the USA – ‘trainers’ in the UK) were the fashion choices of the thrash/speed metal bands, at least in the early days of the genre…often accompanied by a snarl.
Megadeth are one of the so-called ‘Big Four’ thrash metal bands, along with Metallica, Slayer and Anthrax. Their leader, Dave Mustaine, was in the original pre-fame Metallica line-ups, according to the man himself performing a prominent role in the band as the lead guitarist and one of the primary songwriters. Mustaine wrote four of the seven songs on the first Metallica demo ‘No Life Till Leather’ – ‘Mechanix’, ‘Phantom Lord’, ‘Jump In The Fire’ and ‘Metal Militia’. When Metallica release their first album ‘Kill ‘Em All’, thosen four songs were all included, ‘Mechanix’ reworked and renamed as ‘The Four Horsemen’.
The band’s lifestyle at the time was, as Mustaine describes in his autobiography, ‘completely out of control’:
“I will never deny that I was a handful in those days. I was aggressive, driven, and unpredictable, and I drank way too much. But so did everyone else in the band. We practically lived in our cars, driving up and down the coast, drinking before and after rehearsals and gigs. It wasn’t unusual for one or more members of the band to pass out during those trips and wake up to discover that his face or body had been painted. We shared homes, money, equipment, drugs, alcohol, girls. It was a life of utter decadence (and at times one hell of a lot of fun). For all of us.” [2.]
Rehab, rehab and more rehab…Mustaine sums up his life on the cover of his autobiography.
Mustaine travelled with Metallica from San Francisco to New York and played two shows with them in ‘The Big Apple’ in 1983 when he was famously thrown out of the band, an incident which would leave him embittered for many years to come. Allegedly James Hetfield drove Mustaine to the bus station with the bus ticket to California that the band had purchased for him, but no subsistence money whatsoever, meaning poor Dave had to beg food and drink from his fellow passengers for the duration of the trip.
The cliche ‘every cloud has a silver lining’ could apply to what happened next, Mustaine finding the key to his future in some junkmail at the back of the bus…Serendipity?
“At one point I was sitting at the back of the bus, my stomach rumbling, my head throbbing. On the floor I spotted a pamphlet. I picked it up and began reading, just to pass the time, really. It turned out to be a handbill authored by California senator Alan Cranston. The discussion focused primarily on the dangers of nuclear proliferation. For some reason, one line in particular stood out:
‘The arsenal of megadeath can’t be rid no matter what the peace treaties come to.’
I let that swim around in my aching head for a few minutes – ‘the arsenal of megadeath…the arsenal of megadeath’ – and then, for some reason I can’t quite explain, I began to write. Using a borrowed pencil and a cupcake wrapper, I wrote the first lyrics of my post-Metallica life. The song was called ‘Megadeth’ (I dropped the second ‘a’), and though it would never find its way onto an album, it did serve as the basis for the song ‘Set The World Afire.’
It hadn’t occurred to me then that Megadeth – as used by Senator Cranston, ‘megadeath’ referred to the loss of one million lives as a result of nuclear holocaust – might be a perfectly awesome name for a thrash metal band.” [2.]
Apparently, ‘Rust In Peace’ was named when Mustaine was ‘speeding’ on his way home from a skydiving trip:
“The concept of ‘Rust In Peace’…sprang from a bumper sticker I saw one day while driving on the freeway. I forget the precise wording but it was something like ‘May all your nuclear weapons rust in peace’, and immediately I had this image in my head of a pile of warheads sitting in a field somewhere, covered with graffiti.” [2.]
Warning,,,radiation! The warheads will all rust in peace…
Mustaine has described himself as a ‘politically active artist’ and as someone who is not easy to pin down or classify.
By 1990, Megadeth had released three studio albums – debut ‘Killing Is My Business…and Business Is Good’ (1985), the superb ‘Peace Sells…but Who’s Buying?’ (1986) and ‘So Far, So Good…So What?’ (1988). The ‘Rust In Peace’ record was the first not to feature three dots (…) in the title and was band’s biggest success at the time, selling in excess of a million copies as well as being nominated for a Grammy award.
In ‘A Life In Metal’, Dave Mustaine tells the tale of the studio, the bizarre nature of its ownership, the sacking of the first producer because of his anti-social habits and the eventual ridding of producer Mike Clink due to the antics of his dog!:
“Funny thing was, it didn’t start out that well. We recorded at a place called Rumbo Recorders, which was owned by the Captain and Tennille, of all. Imagine that! Megadeth tracking in the same place where ‘Muskrat Love’ was recorded. I was sceptical about Rumbo offering the right atmosphere, a feeling that was exacerbated one day when I walked in and saw our producer, Dave Jurdin, eating a chilli dog and smoking a cigarette at the controls. The place just reeked. Jurdin was gone within days, replaced by Mike Clink, whose credentials were strong, if not impeccable. Clink and I got off on the wrong foot as well when, early in the process, he said, ‘Listen bro, if Axl calls, I may have to take off for a little while.’ ‘What?’ ‘Yeah, I’m doing the Guns’N’ Roses album, too, so if Axl needs me, you understand?’ ‘Yeah, I understand. You better hope he doesn’t call.’ He didn’t. Clink made it almost to the very end, until he started bringing his new puppy to work with him, and the damn dog ate a hole in the wall and then knocked over my guitar, and we just had to let him go…” [2.]
Mustaine however explains that Mike Clink has always been given credit for all the production on ‘Rust In Peace’ and decribes it as ‘a terrific record, start to finish.’
In the CD booklet, Dave Mustaine describes the ‘sliding doors’ moment when he realised that Marty Friedman was the next guitarist for the band, beginning the band’s iconic era, defined by a unique sonic chemistry:
“I was miserable and had tried everything; everything except that one ‘Varney’ dude with half-orange/half-black hair and a CD named ‘Dragon Kiss’ attached to it. After hoping against hope, he was one of the last guys I had to listen to, or more likely wanted to listen to; in fact, I only put in the CD to see what kind of music a guy with that hair color would sound like. Megadeth changed forever that day. Marty had a unique and beautiful style that was a breath of fresh air.” [1.]
Marty Friedman recounted in an interview with The Sick Room radio, New Zealand, that he knew nothing about Megadeth before joining and had an audition for Madonna’s band the same week that he tried out for the thrash metal gods! Friedman talks fondly of the band chemistry:
“It just felt right, right off the bat…I thought ‘these guys are awesome’…needless to say, I didn’t even bother doing the Madonna audition…At that time, I was homeless and living in Hollywood…I really loved the music…It was just a good solid album…There weren’t a whole lot of bands doing stuff that was that aggressive outside of punk, and we had the punk attitude…at that time, it was really unique…I thought it was too extreme for the mainstream…too hardcore…I came in and rehearsed everything with everybody and basically was given the freedom to do whatever I wanted – ‘play it like you wanna play it’…I thought it was a magical creative connection…”
[7.]
“Who’s a pretty boy then?” Mustaine, Menza, Ellefson, Friedman – the classic Megadeth line-up
Tutored by amazing musicians who were part of his jazz-musician father’s circle when he grew up in Munich, Germany, Nick Menza brought that flavour to the band when he joined, albeit some may find that influence hard to find in a thrash-metal album! Bassist Dave Ellefson was a co-founder of the band with Mustaine and a partner in crime for years to come, on and off. Marty Friedman completed the ‘classic’ line-up…Mustaine, Friedman, Ellefson and Menza created an amazing trilogy of Megadeth albums – war-torn post-nuclear holocaust ‘Rust In Peace’, the environmental commentary of ‘Countdown To Extinction’ and 1994’s ‘Youthanasia’, about the United States effectively killing its youth (as electronic meisters Suicide had prophesised in ‘Ghost Rider’). Happy days? Well, yes, if you like your music edgy and political with a punishing force! Anthems like ‘Symphony Of Destruction’, ‘Sweating Bullets’ and the poignant farwell ‘A Tout Le Monde’ were born of this era and stand the test of the three decades that have elapsed since…
Holy Wars…The Punishment Due
“Brother will kill brother
Spilling blood across the land
Killing for religion
Something I don’t understand…”
[1.]
Apparently ‘Holy Wars’ was inspired by a trip that Dave Mustaine made to Northern Ireland. The first part of the song is certainly about religious wars, past, present and maybe gazing into a prophecy of a future new world order…Israel is also name-checked and the lyrics could relate to many conflicts where ‘brother will kill brother’ – Sufis, versus Shiites or Sunnis in the Middle East? Hindus versus Muslims in the Indian subcontinent? The second part of the song is about fictional anti-hero The Punisher, from the comic books published by Marvel. The main character, Francis ‘Frank’ Castle (anglified from ‘Castiglione’) is an Italian-American who first appeared in ‘The Amazing Spiderman’ in 1974, a dangerous war veteran ex-Marine-turned-vigilante who loves killing and all things violent, employing every manner of physical brutality in his one-man crusade against crime.
Hangar 18
“Military intelligence
Two word combined that don’t make sense”
[1.]
Mustaine highlights the oxy-moronic language used in politics and defence-speak, just as outspoken poets and musicians like Gil Scott-Heron have done.
Mustaine takes sole credit for the lyrics and music on the release but some say that Nick Menza had a hand in the words…In any case, the song is a Megadeth classic and has since been a live staple. It features a conspiracy theory, possibly about aliens who have landed with equipment capable of achieving their goal of controlling the human race…
Take No Prisoners
Call and response! Yes, the classic songwriting, lyric-writing, singing tradition gets a re-write, Dave Mustaine style!
“Got one chance, (infiltrate them)
Get it right, (terminate them)
The Panzers will (permeate them)
Break their pride (denigrate them)
And their people (retrograde them)
Typhus, (deteriorate them)
Epidemic (devastate them)
Take no prisoners, (cremate them)
Burn!” [1.]
The song is an anti-war anthem and delves into Second World War territory, something Mustaine acknowledges may not have been the most diplomatic, given that Marty Friedman was Jewish and asked to sing backing vocals on lines about the Panzer divisions…
Five Magics
No less than seven guitar solos feature in this Mustaine-penned masterpiece about the occult, dwelling lyrically as it does on themes of wizardry, alchemy, sorcery and, of course, magic…A princely five minutes and forty-two seconds long, the tune involves a number of musical and tempo changes, illustrating the complexity of the band’s music and giving the musicians a chance to stretch out.
Poison Was The Cure
Was poison the cure? Dave Mustaine has said that he wrote the song about heroin addiction, his chemical abuse and how, at the time, he thought that said poison was the cure to his problems. Dave Ellefson talked to Meltdown on the thirtieth anniversary of ‘Rust In Peace’ and one of the top topics was substance abuse. Ellefson also refers to his relationship with the difficult Mr. Mustaine: “Can you hang out?…It’s like a marriage you know…Dave brings the ‘rock god’ part to it, and I bring the humanity…” [5.]
Lucretia
Is this song about a dream state, ghosts, family past and gone? It’s gothic in it’s lyrical content anyway as Dave Mustaine paints a very ethereal picture, very different to a lot of the subject matter on the album. Could it be inspired by Lucretia, the tragic heroine of Ancient Rome, the beautiful wife of a nobeman who was raped and subsequently stabbed herself to death?
Tornado Of Souls
Another tale of tragedy? A violent rotation between earth and the skies above? Certainly nihilistic lyrics about a break-up or many, with a very catchy chorus:
“But now I’m safe in the eye of the tornado
I can’t replace the lies that let a thousand days go
No more living, trapped inside
In her way, I’ll surely die
In the eye of the tornado, blow me away”
[1.]
Shakespearean in its play out, the protagonist poisons the subject of the song in the end, after much planning…
Dawn Patrol
“Thermal count is rising
In perpetual writhing
The primordial ooze
And the sanity they lose
Awakened in the morning
To more air pollution warnings
Still we sleepwalk off to work
While our nervous systems jerk
Pretending not to notice
How history had forebode us
With the green house in effect
Our environment was wrecked
Now I can only laugh
As I read our epitaph
We end our lives as moles
In the dark of dawn patrol” [1.]
Will the air be so polluted in future that we will all have to live underground? Mustaine narrates a post-apocalyptic dystopian landscape picture over a slow bass figure, a break from the thrash and speed metal mayhem, but disturbing none the less.
Rust In Peace…Polaris
“In December 1962, President John F Kennedy told the British Prime-Minister Harold Macmillan that the US would sell its most advanced nuclear missile technology to the UK – so long as it remained nominally a NATO deterrent capability.
Britain was given the then-revolutionary UGM-27 Polaris submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) under the 1962 Nassau Agreement. The US agreed to sell the missile, launch compartment and guidance technology to Britain, which in turn would manufacture her own nuclear warheads and the submarines to carry the system.” [4.]
So that’s the brief history of Polaris, but what of the song? It starts with Nick Menza’s drum fills, before the crunching rhythm guitars and bass kick in, followed by screaming lead, then Dave Mustaine’s distinctive snarling vocals:
“Tremble, you weaklings, cower in fear
I am your ruler – land, sea, and air
Immense in my girth, erect I stand tall
I am a nuclear murderer, I am Polaris” [1.]
Written in the first person, as if the nuclear missile system is narrating the song, the lyrics are excellent, biting, toxic and delivered with the necessary venom:
“Winds blow from the bowels of Hell
Will we give warning? Only time will tell
Satan rears his ugly head
To spit into the wind” [1.]
The chorus is even more powerful:
“I spread disease like a dog, discharge my payload
A mile high, rotten egg air of death wrestles your nostrils
I spread disease like a dog, discharge my payload
A mile high, rotten egg air of death wrestles your nostrils
Launch the Polaris
The end doesn’t scare us
When will this cease
The warheads will all rest in peace” [1.]
The tempo increases for the second part of the piece, Mustaine and Friedman rocking out on some gnarly riffs while Ellefson and Menza provide the somewhat jazzy groove beneath. There’s a brief pause to let the warheads rest in peace and then there’s infectious riffing to the outro…At just over five and a half minutes, there’s enough time for plenty of musical interest in this symphony of destruction – a fine closure to a superb album and a Megadeth classic.
In what was allegedly his last interview before he died in 2016, Nick Menza said that the ‘Rust In Peace’ album possessed a ‘raw energy’ because the band recorded it in the studio live:
“We rehearsed Rust In Peace for a year, then we went into the studio and we cut it live. There’s no click track on that record – it’s really raw and has a lot of energy…”Rust In Peace is the milestone album, because it’s not using the click, it’s about being tight. You’ve got to go into the studio and be prepared.” [6.]
After forty minutes and forty-four seconds of the original album, if you’ve managed to survive the onslaught, you’ll surely be drained, emotionally and physically, as if you’ve been dragged, and sometimes catapulted, through a post apocalyptic dystopia, and if you happened to die out there and lie like a piece of metal ripped apart by an unforgiving world, rust in peace…
‘Heads down no nonsense mindless boogie…’
‘Rust In Peace’ tracklisting:
Holy Wars…The Punishment Due (Mustaine)
Hangar 18 (Mustaine)
Take No Prisoners (Mustaine)
Five Magics (Mustaine)
Poison Was The Cure (Mustaine)
Lucretia (Music: Mustaine/Ellefson, lyrics: Mustaine)
Tornado Of Souls (Music: Mustaine, lyrics: Mustaine/Ellefson)
Dawn Patrol (music: Ellefson, lyrics: Mustaine)
Rust In Peace…Polaris (Mustaine)
‘Rust In Peace’
Originally released: 24th September 1990
Label: Capitol
Recorded at: Rumbo Recorders, Los Angeles, USA
Produced by: Mike Clink and Dave Mustaine
Engineered by: Mike Clink and Micajah Ryan assisted by Andy Udoff
Mixed by: Max Norman at One On One Recorders
Album cover illustration: Edward J. Repka
Personnel – Megadeth
Dave Mustaine – vocals, guitars
Marty Friedman – guitars
David Ellefson – bass guitars, back-up vocals
Nick Menza – lead drums, back-up vocals
Mustaine, Ellefson and Friedman are still playing music. Nick Menza passed away in 2016.
Additional personnel:
Sandra Rabbin – the voice of Lucretia on ‘Lucretia’
References, quotes and photographs:
1. Megadeth ‘Rust In Peace CD (author’s own collection)
2. Mustaine, D. with Layden, J.. (2011). ‘A Life In Metal. London: Harper.
3. Stetina, T. and Burton, T. (1990). ‘Speed & Thrash Metal Guitar Method’. Milwaukee: Hal Leonard.
4. Polaris and the history of Britain’s nuclear weapons: https://english.alaraby.co.uk/opinion/polaris-and-history-britains-nuclear-weapons
5. Talkin’ Rock with David Ellefson – Rust In Peace 30th Anniversary: https://wrif.com/episodes/talkin-rock-with-david-ellefson-rust-in-peace-30th-anniversary/
6. Nick Menza’s final interview: https://www.loudersound.com/news/nick-menza-s-final-interview-recalls-milestone-rust-in-peace-sessions
7. Marty Friedman talks Megadeth’s ‘Rust In Peace’ album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wky7X3187oA
Eddie's Rock Music A-Z 