Megadeth Rude Awakening

After his exit from Metallica, Dave Mustaine regrouped with his own band on this debut album, accentuating his own chaotic, driving rhythm guitar work and careening, lightning-fast solos. The music here is as raw as Megadeth gets, and that can be both good and bad - Megadeth's later precise, complex riffing and composition aren't completely developed, but the music is performed with a great deal of energy, while Mustaine's vocals (never his strong point) are amateurish at best. Highlights include a retooled version of Nancy Sinatra's "Boots" and "Mechanix," a Mustaine composition written with Metallica, which turned into the latter's "The Four Horsemen."

Arguably Megadeth's strongest effort and a classic of early thrash, Peace Sells combines a punkish political awareness with a dark, threatening, typically heavy metal world-view, preoccupied with evil, the occult, and the like. The anthemic title track and "Wake Up Dead" are the two major standouts, and there is also a cover of Willie Dixon's "I Ain't Superstitious," which takes on an air of supernaturally induced paranoia in the album's context. The lines between hell and earth are blurred throughout the album, and the crashing, complex music backs up Dave Mustaine's apocalyptic vision of life as damnation - his limited vocal style is used to great effect, growling and snarling in a barely intelligible fashion under all the complicated guitar work. Vital, necessary thrash.

Megadeth’s explosive new album featuring twelve new songs from the titans of thrash metal! Produced by Dave Mustaine and Chris Rakestraw, the follow-up to the critically acclaimed, Grammy® award winning album Dystopia will melt Megadeth fans’ minds worldwide with songs like “We’ll Be Back,” the new radio hit “Killing Time” and “Night Stalkers” – the latter of which features icon Ice T.

A sobered-up Mustaine returns with yet another lineup, this one featuring ex-Cacophony guitar virtuoso Marty Friedman and drummer Nick Menza, for what is easily Megadeth's strongest musical effort. As Metallica was then doing, Mustaine accentuates the progressive tendencies of his compositions, producing rhythmically complex, technically challenging thrash suites that he and Friedman burn through with impeccable execution and jaw-dropping skill. Thanks to Mustaine's focus on the music rather than his sometimes clumsy lyrics, Rust in Peace arguably holds up better than any other Megadeth release, even for listeners who think they've outgrown heavy metal. While the whole album is consistently impressive, the obvious highlight is the epic, Eastern-tinged "Hangar 18."

The System Has Failed marks a return from the dead for Megadeth – and quite a glorious return, it must be said. When bandleader Dave Mustaine was diagnosed in early 2002 with radial neuropathy - strained nerves in his left arm and hand - the snarling guitar shredder was forced to disband his once groundbreaking group after nearly two decades of activity. Granted, it wasn't that big of a loss at the time, chiefly so because Megadeth had long passed its prime. The band's key recordings date back to the speed metal era, from 1986 (the year of Peace Sells, Reign in Blood, and Master of Puppets) to 1992 (the year Megadeth, like Metallica a year earlier, made a distinct, more commercial shift, releasing Countdown to Extinction - to the dismay of many longtime fans). Following Countdown, Megadeth struggled…