During a recent episode of his Gimme Radio program “The Dave Mustaine Show”, the MEGADETH leader offered an update on the progress of the recording sessions for the band’s follow-up to 2016’s “Dystopia” album. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Thankfully, my partner is coming back out to Nashville, and we’re gonna be commencing on some guitar tracks and solos and some ear candy to wrap all that up. We’ve got probably about another… I’ve got one song left to sing, and then another song I’ve got one sentence that I’ve gotta finish. Other than that, all the vocals are done on this record, and it’ll be time to focus now on background vocals and the remaining stuff with solos and, as we say… I know I’ve said it so many times — ‘ear candy.’ For you guys that don’t know what that is, it’s just what it sounds like — it’s sticky, sappy, syrupy crap people put on records that help to — I don’t know — make the song sound better. When you’re thinking about AC/DC, you don’t usually think about percussion.”
This past February, Mustaine said during another episode of his Gimme Radio program “The Dave Mustaine Show” that he had just received “a really cool lyric” from MEGADETH bassist David Ellefson that he was planning to turn into a song. In addition, he revealed that the album will include an as-yet-undisclosed cover track.
In January, Ellefson told the “Rock ‘N’ Roll Icons With Bode James” podcast the recently announced working title for MEGADETH‘s upcoming album, “The Sick, The Dying And The Dead”, will likely end up getting changed before the LP is released.
The early sessions for the album took place in 2019 with co-producer Chris Rakestraw, who previously worked on “Dystopia”.
“Dystopia”, whose title track was honored in the “Best Metal Performance” category at the 2017 Grammy Awards, marked Brazilian guitarist Kiko Loureiro‘s recording debut with MEGADETH.
MEGADETH‘s current lineup is rounded out by 46-year-old Belgian-born-and-now-Los-Angeles-based drummer Dirk Verbeuren, who had played with SOILWORK for more than a decade before joining MEGADETH.
