Deth for life
Dave Mustaine is a Christian now, but Megadeth’s music is still angry as hell
Mike Warkentin

It’s surreal to hear Dave Mustaine talk about his children performing in a production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.

Mustaine, after all, is the guy who was famously kicked out of Metallica for his addictions, and the guitar hero has battled drug and alcohol problems for much of his life. He was a poster child for metal excess in the ’80s and early ’90s, a man known as much for his struggles as for his brilliant axe work at the helm of legendary thrash metal band Megadeth.

In 2007, Mustaine is clean and sober and a born-again Christian — but his aggressive stance on politics and the state of the world hasn’t been tempered by his new morals.

That’s where the Technicolour Dreamcoat comes in. Turns out the famous musical partially inspired the lyrics to Washington Is Next, a signature dual shredfest to be released on May 8 as part of United Abominations, the new album by the latest incarnation of Megadeth, which is now rounded out by Canadian brothers Glen and Shawn Drover (guitars, drums) and James LoMenzo (bass).

“The song itself, if you look at the lyrics, it’s the combination of a dream that was taught to me when I was in Sunday school as a kid, and it was part of the play Joseph’s Technicolour Dreamcoat,” Mustaine says from his home in Fallbrook, Calif. “My kids, they’re little actors and a little actress... and there’s a drama troupe here in our town, and they just got them doing that play and I thought, ‘Wow, that’s an interesting thing, and then I thought about world history and the world powers that have fallen and how they’ve all fallen.

“It’s a little bit of world history and little bit of drama.”

The song Amerikhastan, on the other hand, is based on Jack Bauer’s exploits.

“Amerikhastan was a song that was inspired by the television series on Fox, 24... I love that show. Last night I was sitting at home holding my breath for an hour.

“To me, Amerikhastan is fictional, but it’s kinda scary how much it mirrors how we’re living in almost an Orwellian prediction...

“And what the chorus says at the end is that we’re just a war away from things being totally inverted and it’s going to be the undoing of man. It’s like Albert Einstein said: World War 3, they asked him what weapons would they use, and he said, ‘I don’t know, but after that one they’re going to be using rocks again.’

“So the next war, who cares what they call America, because if it’s as predicted there ain’t going to be an America. There’s not going to be a world left. It’s kind of a wakeup call.”

Mustaine got his personal wakeup call in 2003, when a freak sleeping injury robbed him of his ability to play the instrument he loves.

“A lot of the fibre that makes up who I am is playing guitar,” he says, now fully recovered from the compressed radial nerve in his fretting hand. “When I couldn’t play guitar anymore it really challenged who I was and I had kind of a loss of identity.”

The new Mustaine is committed to fitness, spiritualism and family, but his music is still as acerbic as it was when Peace Sells... but Who’s Buying? dropped back in 1986.

“I’ve had some experience with the political process, and because of that I think I just know kinda how to say things a little different, not that I’m any smarter than anyone else, because I certainly don’t think I’m wise at all,” he says.

“I kinda say the stuff that everybody else is thinking, and a lot of times they want to say it but they just don’t know how.”