Megadeth has unsurprisingly made the decision to remove David Ellefson from their upcoming album, finding a replacement bass player.
As per Metal Injection, the band’s Dave Mustaine confirmed in a new episode of Gimme Radio’s The Dave Mustaine Show that they’d found a “stellar bass player” to take over Ellefson’s role on the record. Mustaine also hopes that the collaboration will be an ongoing thing in the future.
“I just wanna thank you for all the kinds words and support as we get ready for this next tour and continue to hunt for a new bass player,” Mustaine said. “We are making progress. The record’s being completed, and we’re gonna have someone coming in in a couple of weeks to replace the bass tracks that we had.
Which should be relatively quick because the person we’re talking to is a stellar bass player. And hopefully this will be an ongoing thing after the recording. Or we will find someone prior to the recording that will be our permanent guy going forward.”
Ellefson was fired earlier this year from the metal legends after accusations emerged of him grooming an underage fan. While he admitted to having a relationship with the fan, Ellefson is currently in the process of preparing a defamation lawsuit against the person who initially posted the sexually explicit videos of him online.
As for who the new bassist could be, Mustaine hasn’t revealed any name yet. James MacDonough, who played bass live with the band between 2004 and 2006, and James LoMenzo, who followed him from 2006 until 2010, could be the musician in question.
Former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted has already confirmed that he won’t be linking up with Megadeth in the aftermath of Ellefson’s departure. With the band due to tour with Lamb of God, Trivium, and In Flames in August though, we’ll all know soon enough.
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