Although Megadeth intended for 2020 to be their big year of return, COVID-19 had other plans, and now bassist David Ellefson has explained why the heavy metal band won’t be recording their new album while distanced.
Appearing on Epic Footnote Productions podcast There Goes My Hero, Megadeth’s bassist, David Ellefson, took to explaining why the California heavy metal collective have decided to wait on recording their new album until they’re able to in person once again.
“We talked about it, but we don’t wanna make a Megadeth record like that,” Ellefson stated. “This record, very much from the onset of it was… Once we got in a room together last summer, the Ozzy [Osbourne] tour, at that point, it was postponed, [and] now, of course, it’s canceled.”
“We right away just regrouped and went, ‘Let’s get to Nashville and start working on this record. And let’s be in a room with four guys and our engineer,’ with Chris Rakestraw, who’s co-producing the record with Dave [Mustaine, frontman], ‘Let’s get in a room and just be dudes in a room jamming.’ We had a lot of ideas. A few of them were together. There was a lot of things sitting out there, and we just knew that being in a room, another three, four, five songs came together out of that process.”
Ellefson continued by stating that one of the main reasons they’re waiting until they can gather together is that it seems the records which have resonated the most with fans, like a few of their earlier albums, were things they wrote together both as a band, and in the same room.
“We wrote them in a band room together — the old-school way, when you go to a jam room and start jamming,” he detailed. “‘Cause there’s just a spirit about that… At the end of the day, it’s just good to be in the room and feeling like a band.”
According to the esteemed bassist, the magic that goes on in a band room is unparalleled to anything they can create while distanced: “The thing I’ve found is that when we’re jamming a riff and I’m looking over and Dave’s got his snarl and I’m fucking headbanging and our feet are spread and our fucking guitars are in between, when you see that in the room, it’s like a confirmation that this is fucking great, this is rad,” he stated.
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When it comes to live shows, the feeling remains, with Ellefson stating: “And when we feel it in the room, that same feeling goes to the stage and goes out to ten [or] fifteen [or] hundred thousand people that we’re performing for. There’s just that thing.”
Check out ‘Symphony of Destruction’ by Megadeth:
