Megadeth

Some bands slip away quietly. Megadeth never wanted that. Calling their seventeenth and, according to Dave Mustaine, final studio album self-titled is the biggest statement available: this is meant to be the sum of everything. Four decades, compressed into ten songs plus a bonus track.

The good news first — and it is not a small one. Instrumentally this band still has barely any competition. Finnish newcomer Teemu Mäntysaari, for whom this is both a first and a last Megadeth record, plays his way to the centre with an ease that recalls the golden era: his solos have phrasing, narrative arc, wit. Together with the rhythm pairing of James LoMenzo and Dirk Verbeuren, the result is precise without ever sounding sterile. "Tipping Point" opens sharply, "Let There Be Shred" lives up to its title, and "Obey The Call" is the moment the album drops its guard and genuinely thrashes — the spirit of "Rust In Peace" blows closer here than anywhere else. "Made To Kill", too, is a track where everything clicks.

And yet: an album carrying the band's own name invites a merciless yardstick. It is not met throughout. Too often the songwriting leans on middle-of-the-road riffs and choruses you recognise because Megadeth once wrote them better. "I Don't Care" reaches for casual contempt and mostly sounds like it is trying too hard. And Mustaine's voice, for decades this band's venomous trademark, is today its limiting factor — it carries, but it rarely lifts the songs.

Which leaves the bonus track. That Mustaine marks the end of his career with a re-recording of "Ride The Lightning" — the song he co-wrote and which ended up with Metallica — makes biographical sense and is still, dramatically, an own goal. Instead of "The Last Note", that reconciliatory, almost moving farewell piece, what lingers at the end is the old score. Four decades, and the final glance goes to the neighbour once again.

That does not make "Megadeth" a bad album. It is a solid, at times strong late work by a band that commands its craft like few others. It just never delivers the exclamation mark its title promises.

{{album:megadeth-megadeth}}