This late into a musical career, bands often go on autopilot, but Megadeth is still putting out music that rivals anything in the metal scene. After a couple of missteps, such as the more commercial sounds of Risk and Super Collider that really don’t work, Megadeth has corrected the course. 2016’s Dystopia put the band back on the right track and with its 16th album in 39 years, the thrash metal pioneers are making some of the best music they’ve done since the early 1990s.
Recorded in frontman Dave Mustaine’s home studio with co-producer Chris Rakestraw, The Sick, The Dying … And The Dead picks up where Dystopia left off. This is a punishing metal album laden with catchy riffs, head-banging fury, and intricate prog-metal compositions.
Over nearly four decades of work, Mustaine has made himself perhaps the greatest guitar hero for metalheads around the world. His guitar work is complex, full of attention-grabbing hooks, virtuoso shredding, and off-kilter structures, but still accessible and heavy. With guitarist Kiko Loureiro, drummer Dirk Verbeuren, and bassist Steve DiGiorgio, Megadeth’s new release offers all of the band’s trademarks.
The album-opening title track starts things off with an ominous guitar arpeggio that builds steam and then bursts into an upbeat riff battle between Mustaine and Loureiro. In the song, Mustaine paints an apocalyptic picture of society being overwhelmed by a plague. “You can’t mask the fragrance of death in their beds,” Mustaine sings. No one is safe from this plague, it seems. “Rich or poor, they’re dragged through the streets,” he sings.
The song, about the bubonic plague, was actually written prior to the COVID pandemic, but it’s impossible to disconnect its haunting depictions from those that have been flashing on news programs over the last two years.
Mustaine’s voice has gotten deeper and grainier over the years and he can no longer hit the high notes of the band’s early songs. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Today his voice doesn’t have the same snarl, but it has a bit more menace, and his more subdued vocals put the emphasis on the music.
“Night Stalkers” is one of the album’s standout tracks. The verses are fueled by Verbeuren’s rapid-fire kick drum attack and Mustaine’s hyper-speed alternate picking. The song then slows down to a brutal chug for each chorus. The track is packed to the gills with hooks and even an ill-advised rapped verse by Ice-T can’t derail it. This time the apocalyptic imagery has a military flavor, with mentions of Black Hawks and roaring engines that “causes the ground to quake, to buck and convulse.”
The mid-tempo anthem “Soldier On” continues the military imagery. “Marching off to war, everyone can see they’re paralyzed with fear,” Mustaine sings. Throughout the song, the growling guitars build to choruses that contrast thudding rhythms with soaring lead licks full of ascending and descending pull-offs.
“Mission To Mars” is the only radio-friendly rocker on the album, but it’s not bad, though a bit generic. “Celebutante” is high-octane thrash that skewers narcissistic celebrities while “Junkie” is an alchemy of nasty riffing that takes on substance abuse.
“We’ll Be Back” ends the album once again on an anti-war theme, with Mustaine showing how military conflicts dehumanize soldiers. “No time for remorse over unclaimed remains; it’s just flotsam and jetsam and it’s circling the drain,” he sings over improbably fast speed metal.
The Sick, The Dying … And The Dead doesn’t have anything as epic as “Holy Wars” or “Hangar 18” or a riff as instantly memorable as “Symphony of Destruction.” But from start to finish, it offers unrelenting intensity and an outlet to channel anger and fears from a world ravaged by a pandemic, war, and economic struggles into shouting and head-banging along with Mustaine’s somewhat-fictional tales of the same. Megadeth has been pairing doomsday stories with pulverizing thrash mayhem since 1983. All these years later, the band’s music is as relevant as ever.
