Ellefson also addressed Mustaine‘s claim that the upcoming MEGADETH album will be “up there with ‘Countdown [To Extinction]’, ‘Rust In Peace’ and probably ‘Peace Sells’ and ‘Dystopia’.”
“I would very much agree,” Ellefson said. “Look, MEGADETH has done a lot of stuff over the years. Some fans go, ‘Oh, dude, make it thrash, thrash.’ And we do — ‘Dystopia’ proved that. But you can’t just be a one-trick pony. We’ve never been a one-trick pony. Even on the earlier records — ‘Killing Is My Business’ started with a piano. ‘Peace Sells’ had a song on it called ‘Good Mourning’, which went into ‘Black Friday’; it was basically kind of an acoustic guitar bit. We’ve done a lot of different stuff over the years. So with MEGADETH, you get a lot of diversity. And the musicians that are in the group, I think we challenge each other; we raise the bar for each other. And it inspires us to keep creating next-level stuff. So I think that’s kind of the beauty of what you get with MEGADETH — is you get a lot. You get a pretty big bang for your buck, I think.”
The early sessions for the LP 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.