Tag Archives: Megadeth

Music

Megadeth’s Killing Is My Business… And Business is Good 2018 Remaster

All right, so I’ve dealt with the remastered editions of some VERY big heavy hitting talent in recent days, first David Bowie with his Loving The Alien boxed set, which includes a pretty good re-do of what many consider his career worst album, Never Let Me Down, and more recently the beautifully remastered The Beatles, aka The White Album.  You can read about the Bowie remaster here and The Beatles here.

Remastering albums is certainly not a new thing, and at times it has been met with anger.  In recent years, however, it seems like newer remasters have been better.  Certainly in the case of the Bowie and The Beatles albums, it was for the best.

Megadeth, one of the pioneer thrash/heavy metal groups fronted by one-time Metallica member Dave Mustaine, released their first album in 1985.  Titled Killing Is My Business… And Business Is Good, it was a more than decent first effort with some really fun songs (I loved the very profane remake of These Boots).  The sound, however, was quite muddled and, when I heard Mr. Mustaine was remixing the album back in 2004, I was hopeful that the muddled sounds would be alleviated.

Alas, the end result was not very good.  Worse, the original authors of These Boots were apparently quite offended with Mr. Mustaine’s… uh… reinterpretation and new lyrics of the song and would not allow it to be re-released as it was.  So, in a very silly move, the remixed version of 2004 featured the song with “bleeps” to negate the offending lyrics.

Fast forward to (and unknown to me until yesterday) June of this year and a new re-mix of Killing Is My Business was released.

I have to say, Killing Is My Business is a terrific improvement over the original 1985 release and most certainly much better than Mustaine’s 2004 remix.

Killing Is My Business...And Business Is Good - The Final Kill [Explicit]

If you like that album, getting this remaster is a no-brainer.

As for These Boots… it appears we’ll never again see the release of the original Megadeth version of the song.  However, this time around they wisely nixed the whole “bleeped” version of the song and, instead, remastered the music and had Dave Mustaine simply sing the song with its original lyrics.

Yeah, it isn’t quite as darkly funny as the original version and, yeah, Dave Mustaine’s voice is clearly more worn down than it was on the original album (decades of concerts and singing will certainly do that to you… check out Bruce Springsteen’s voice in some of his earliest albums versus while currently on tour).

So, if you’re into 1980’s era speed/thrash metal, checking out the most recent remix of Killing Is My Business is a no-brainer.

General, Music

Dave Mustaine endorses….Rick Santorum?!

Say it ain’t so!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/15/rick-santorum-megadeth_n_1279794.html

Back in the later 1980’s and for a several years afterwards, I really got into the heavy metal music of Anthrax, Stormtroopers of Death, and Megadeth.  Though I tried a few other bands at that time, including the ever-popular Metallica and heavy metal favorites Slayer, the ones I really liked was that original group of three…two if you count Stormtroopers of Death as what they were, half the members of Anthrax doing an offshoot project.

Megadeth, fronted by ex-Metallica member Dave Mustaine, were in my mind sensational.  While the fact that he was kicked out of Metallica resulted in plenty of “which band is better” comments among the fans, to me there was no question:  Megadeth was the better group…if not the better selling and more popular one.

Mr. Mustaine certainly had his demons, including alcohol and drug use and the group went through more personnel changes than any other band I had followed.  For the most part, however, it didn’t appear to hurt their music.  Each successive album was quite good, at least in those early years.  The band, in my opinion, released not one but two absolutely classic heavy metal albums:  1986’s Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying (their second album) and 1990’s Rust in Peace (their fourth album).  Their biggest chart topper would be the album that followed Rust in Peace, 1992’s also quite excellent Countdown to Extinction.

After that came Youthanasia, a decent effort but the band was clearly slowing down and not producing music that was quite as “heavy”.  Their next album, Cryptic Warnings, didn’t do all that much for me.  The album after that, Risk, did even less.

The band underwent more turmoil, but in 2001 and with the release of The World Needs a Hero, I heard faint distinct echoes of what made me like the band in the first place.  While the album as a whole wasn’t as good, IMHO, as some of the “classic” albums, for the first time in a while I was optimistic that maybe, just maybe, Mr. Mustaine and company (whoever he had in the band at that time) could make a comeback.  For the first time in a while, I had hope.

Unfortunately, this hope seemed to be dashed permanently when news came out that Dave Mustaine suffered nerve damage to his arm in 2002 and it looked like he might never be able to play the guitar again.  Mr. Mustaine went on to announce the end of the band and an era appeared over.

But, after extensive therapy, Mr. Mustaine recovered and was back to playing.  Finally, after so many years, could there be a rebirth?

Well, since that time the band has released three more albums.  And in the intervening years, Mr. Mustaine has changed.

A lot.

When it was announced he had become a born again Christian, I noted that his songs began to have a certain…rightward…bend.  Then I heard Mr. Mustaine refused to sing some of the songs off his earlier albums.  They simply didn’t fit his current mind set.  His politics, too, headed right, and therefore it isn’t terribly surprising to find his endorsement of Mr. Santorum, a man who I strongly suspect would be only too happy to ban all of Mr. Mustaine’s music.

It’s a funny world we live in.  I can’t help but wonder what a younger Dave Mustaine would think of the older version of himself.  The personality change is about as complete as one could imagine.

Regardless, I’ve always felt that people should do whatever makes them happy, provided they do no harm to others in the process.  Unfortunately, the subject matter and music in Mr. Mustaine’s latest albums just haven’t been my cup of tea.  At all.  I’ve given up on the hope that Megadeth might one day surprise me and release an album that stands toe to toe with their best.

Luckily, and when the mood hits me, I can still enjoy the works from the past.