Th1rt3en

Age and youth of Megadeth

The two big outcomes of the Big 4 concerts, featuring monsters of thrash metal, Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, and Megadeth, were the half-insane delight of those many who love the never dying extreme music genre, and the great motivation for the musicians too. After all, despite being colleagues and stage neighbors, they are direct competitors. After playing side by side, the metal performers realized that neither age nor discipline and regime problems, so familiar to all true hard rockers, had made anybody slow down. The great guys from Megadeth appeared most concentrated and hard-working. These managed to record a new studio album during the interval between the two parts of the Big 4 Tour. They spent the entire ten-week break working on it. Led by their irreplaceable leader Dave Mustaine (cast out of Metallica long ago) and powered by bassist Dave Ellefson who came back after a long hiatus, Megadeth delivered an excellent product under the explicit title Th1rt3en.

Th1rt3en showcases all the band’s strong sides

That’s right, we are talking about Megadeth album number thirteen. Many of those who reach this point go to the studio rather because they have to than because they want to. Material is so hard to write when you have a dozen records behind your back, and the pauses between the albums grow longer. Megadeth, in the meantime, got down to business with the enthusiasm of desperately young and infinitely talented creators. Sudden Death, the new album’s opener, offers the complete set of artistic means which have always characterized the American thrash-metal band, mainly solid rhythm section, speedy riffs and thorny solos. Th1rt3en proves to be a pure Megadeth work, albeit with some tracks heavily influenced by hard rock, like Public Enemy No. 1, for example. Mustaine has once again written a great lot of splendid songs, some captivating you right away and others taking some time to please you. The indisputable leaders of the list certainly are the gloomy Millennium Of The Blind, aggressive Never Dead, thundering Wrecker and intriguing 13.

This can go on and on

Well aware of what makes the audience adore his ensemble, Dave Mustaine watchfully protects its style. Everything on Th1rt3en sounds exactly the way Megadeth music is supposed to sound. Even the lyrics of the new catalogue preserve the straightforwardness, moderate roughness and apparent social and political coloring of the older stuff. There were times when no one would place Megadeth amongst Anthrax, and Slayer, and Mustaine was seen as an insolent nobody unworthy of a place in Metallica. Yet nowadays many of metal scene stalwarts are struggling to prolong their existence, while Megadeth are playing so as if neither time nor the audience’s ever changing preferences have power over them. The musicians admit calmly that they can not repeat the success of their legendary Rust In Peace (1990), and just keep doing what they always did. With their skills, experience and confidence, they can release more than one record to match the brilliant Th1rt3en.