Album Review : Megadeth - Dystopia (2016)

Order DYSTOPIA here

Let me tell you something about metalheads: we greatly value musical integrity. Why? I do not know. What I do know is that we take serious offense when bands stray from their original sound even the tiniest bit. This is why Dave Mustaine has been a controversial figure in metal for several decades now. We never know what to expect out of him. That is because he never seemed to know what direction he should take his band Megadeth in. They've been radicalizing and commercializing and radicalizing again since they first his mainstream succes with Countdown to Extinction in 1992. Dystopia unfortunately doesn't offer any relevant insight on Megadeth's future musical direction, but it's a good one. Shit, it's a great one even.

Dave Mustaine's last interesting effort came seven years ago with the release of Endgame. It got fans all riled up then, because we figured he finally understood what we expected of him all along. Walls of guitar, deliriously aggressive and pseudo-educated lyrics played at a breakneck pace. That's it. Megadeth fell flat again after Endgame though and it took seven years for Mustaine to come back with Dystopia, a record that offers the catchy song structure of their nineties classics Countdown to Extinction and Youthanasia with the uncompromising aggression that earned them a small, but loyal following in the eighties. It's the best of both worlds, really. I like to think of Dystopia as Youthanasia on steroids.

Megadeth, when they're good, have always enraptured me too hard to give a critical ear to their music. I'm that guy you find playing air guitar shirtless in the rain after three songs and Mustaine-mugging my inner demons. So I had to play Dystopia over a dozen times to get the headbanging out of me and give it my most honest judgment. It feels stupid to say, but I've never realized before how guitar dominant Megadeth's sound is. Dave Mustaine literally pulls guitar solos out of his ass and shoves them into songs. If you give Dystopia a spin without headphones, you might not even hear the bass. I'm cool with that. Megadeth is Dave Mustaine's show and hearing anything outside of his domineering influence on the band would feel alien.

You're welcome.

Let me reassure you, Dystopia is not a "technical" album. It doesn't require a bachelor degree in guitar in order to appreciate. I've hung out with musicians in college and they always listened to the most boring prog rock, getting orgasms over arpeggios and shit like that. So, I know how it feels to be intellectually locked out of an album and it's not the case in Dystopia. The songs never stop for the solos, they are seemingly integrated and involve both a musical and a lyrical progression. They're like the killer shootout scene at the end of an action movie. Everyone knows they're coming, but they feel so fucking righteous and satisfying anyway. I've enjoyed every guitar solo of Dystopia like I was showering under a waterfall of aggressive guitar notes at work, this week.

Now, the lyrics of Dave Mustaine might make some of you cringe. Songs like Post-American World and Foreign Policy are thematic head-scratchers. It's tough to figure out if Mustaine was satirizing or not when he wrote them because it would totally fit the theme or the album if he did. One way or another, I don't think ol' Dave Mustaine is going to enrapture the youth of America with his lyrical themes. His fanbase is growing older with him and has learned to judge him by the language of his guitar more than his own. Dystopia is not meant to be enjoyed in a cerebral manner anyway. It's music to thrash the place to. It's supposed to make you irrational and inexplicably energetic.

So, what is Dystopia's place in Megadeth's legacy? It sure is an album that came about twenty years too late. It should've been released right after Youthanasia in order to assure musical continuity for the band. Let's not begrudge them for making an actually good album, though. It felt wonderful to hear Dave Mustaine bellow his paranoid thoughts from the top of his lungs again. We love him for being a cartoonishly temperimental rock star with ideas bouncing around his head like bingo balls and it's exactly what he delivered in Dystopia. So, enjoy that goddamn record for what it is for it might be the swansong of Megadeth's musical relevancy. Because you never know with these guys.

Bangers: The Threat is Real, Dystopia, Fatal Illusion, Death from Within, Bullet to the Brain, The Emperor