Megadeth have covered Metallica’s “Ride the Lightning” for the first time live.
Dave Mustaine decided to revisit his former days with Metallica when Megadeth performed two songs he wrote and recorded during his time with Metallica.
At a show in Bogotá, Colombia over the weekend (April 26th), Megadeth played “The Mechanix” — a song off Metallica’s No Life ‘Til Leather demo, which Mustaine had written in an earlier band — and “Ride the Lightning,” the title track of Metallica’s second album.
Watch the latter performance below.
Megadeth recorded a cover of “Ride the Lightning” for their most recent album, which was a big hit in Australia when it released in January.
In a previous interview with SiriusXM’s Front Row to promote Megadeth’s final studio album, Mustaine reflected on his band’s “Ride the Lightning” cover.
“We were nearing the end of the record and we’ve had cover songs by other people, but never a version of a song that I’d done before, excluding what happened with ‘Mechanix’ back in album number one,” he explained.
Mustaine decided to take on the cover after some encouragement from management. “You’ve got to do it as good as they do it or better. So how do you do a song better than Metallica?” Mustaine noted.
Megadeth set about modernising the song, including reworking the solos, while Mustaine took a different approach from James Hetfield to the vocals.
“James and I have two very unique voices… I sang it a little bit more. I think James kind of had a more forceful delivery,” he said.
According to Mustaine, fans reacted positively to their cover. “So far everybody that I’ve talked to really likes what we did… a lot of people noticed that we sped it up or beefed up the drums and solos, and they like it.”
