Dave Mustaine Finally Convinced Me: Metallica Are Better Than Megadeth
Every few months, a new interview with Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine will pop up where Mustaine will talk, yet again, about his role in Metallica. The latter’s original lead guitarist, Mustaine was famously kicked out of Metallica just before recording sessions began for their debut album Kill ‘Em All and replaced with Kirk Hammett. The ousted axeman went on to form Megadeth, a band that has sold tens of millions of albums including some of the greatest thrash metal ever recorded—most notably their 1990 masterpiece Rust in Peace.
Despite all these achievements, Mustaine simply cannot let go about being fired from Metallica. There have been moments when it seems like he’s finally prepared to let bygones be bygones. In 2010, the “Big Four” of trash metal—Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, and Anthrax—performed onstage together for the first time. In 2014, Mustaine wished Metallica frontman James Hetfield a happy birthday on Twitter and told him, “We changed the world brother!” But without fail, a little time will pass and soon Mustaine won’t be able to resist telling another interviewer about how his contributions to Metallica have been unfairly overlooked.
Take this February 2023 Guitar World interview, in which Mustaine once again beats the dead horse of his role in Metallica and their supposed competition with Megadeth, displaying no small amount of bitterness:
Metallica got a big head start, and they did so on the back of what I helped create. They became one of the biggest bands in the world, and here’s one of the biggest bands wasting their breath trying to discredit me by saying, “Dave’s not a good guitar player.” Excuse me, what the fuck did you say? I think I wrote many of the songs that made you famous, so you probably should recheck that bullshit statement.
At this point, it’s just sad. Even former Megadeth bassist David Ellefson, who co-founded the band with Mustaine and was fired a couple years ago, said as much publicly in a recent interview. “I've watched how he’s treated his dismissal from Metallica, still bitching about it 40 years later, and I think it looks fucking pathetic,” Ellefson said, correctly.
The grudge that will not die
Mustaine himself has admitted his inability to get over this, to the point where the conclusion of his own autobiography focuses largely on Metallica. The epilogue of Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir begins with Mustaine in a Hollywood screening room watching a rough cut of a Will Ferrell movie, for which he has been asked to provide some original music. Someone has foolishly used Metallica as placeholder music for a scene, sparking a predictable reaction from Mustaine as he turns to his assistant manager, Isaac. The musician recalls:
Isaac has worked with me for a few years now, long enough to know that nothing is more likely to trigger a Mustaine meltdown than an unexpected dose of Metallica. And this is about as unexpected as it could be.
Hear that, Dave? That’s what we’re after! Something that sounds like Metallica but isn’t Metallica. Can you do that? Please?
I let my head hang for a moment, and then I smile. And Isaac smiles. And then we begin to laugh. Sometimes the world is too perverse to be met with anything other than a sense of humor. I realize at this moment that it’ll never end.
It will never . . . fucking . . . end.
Someday they’ll be lowering my casket into the ground, and they’ll be ready to play me off one last time (“A Tout le Monde” would be nice) and someone will have left a Metallica disc in the CD player.
Mustaine writes of his initial motivations in founding Megadeth: “I was out for blood. I wanted to kick Metallica’s ass”. To his credit, Mustaine is self-aware about his continued bitterness over his dismissal from Metallica. “I’m honestly trying to be better about all this shit,” he says. “You can hold a grudge for only so long. It’s just not healthy.” But it’s clear this is easier said than done for him.
Earlier in the book, Mustaine recounts writing “Go To Hell” for the soundtrack to Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, a film released in July 1991. Months later, Metallica released their self-titled record, better known as the Black Album, which included the song “Enter Sandman”. Both songs incorporate the same children’s prayer. In his own words, Mustaine “freaked out” when he first heard “Enter Sandman”:
The coincidence was mind-boggling and served as another reminder that I would never escape Metallica’s shadow. It would always be there, looming long and dark.
I have developed at least some sense of humor about all of this in my middle age. You can tilt at windmills for only so long, after all, and with much work and assistance from those who know me best, I have learned to appreciate all that I have in my life. But at the time I was fucking enraged. I’ve taken a lot of verbal abuse over the years for never quite letting go of Metallica. Some of it is justified. I know some people look at me—and I include Lars [Ulrich, Metallica drummer] and James in this camp—and say, “Why can’t you just be happy with what you’ve achieved?” And they’re right. Selling twenty million albums is no minor accomplishment. But it’s about half what Metallica has sold, and I was supposed to be part of that.
You had to be there to understand what it was like, to feel like you’re changing the world. And then to have it pulled out from under you and to see and hear reminders of what might have been every single day, for the rest of your life. And you know—you just fucking know—whatever you accomplish, somehow it will never be quite good enough.
In a sense, of course, Mustaine is correct. When it comes to album sales and mainstream popularity, Metallica are in another league from Megadeth.
Metallica are the metal band even non-metalheads know and like. They’re the third highest selling music act of the Soundscan era, in any genre. I was watching the Stanley Cup playoffs this year and kept hearing Metallica songs—not even just the mainstream hits like “Enter Sandman”, which Sportsnet used as bumper music, but deep cuts like “Fight Fire With Fire”, played in the arena during the game. Metallica were even referenced in ’90s sitcoms, during a decade when snobbish music critics gleefully celebrated the alleged death of metal following the rise of grunge and “alternative”. (Reports of metal’s death were greatly exaggerated.)
You don’t just hear Metallica on the radio. You can be at the supermarket and hear “Nothing Else Matters”. I’ve never heard Megadeth at a supermarket, and expect I never will. A couple weeks ago I was at the dentist and my hygienist told me she loves Metallica. Her favourite song is “Master of Puppets”.
Of course, popularity is not the same as quality. Is Metallica a better band than Megadeth? The answer will vary depending on who you ask, and when you’re asking. My introduction to a lot of classic metal bands came from the book 20th Century Rock and Roll: Heavy Metal by Martin Popoff, published in 2000. Popoff ranked what he saw as the top 50 most influential metal bands across three decades: the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. Metallica were ranked #2 among the most influential metal bands of the ’80s, right behind Iron Maiden—a ranking I would agree with (reminder Maiden is my favourite band). As for Megadeth? They were relegated to a list of 25 “almosts” in the appendix. Popoff explained why they didn’t make the final cut:
Almost made the top 50, until I realized that few ever followed that closely any component of the Megadeth sound, although Rust in Peace is a huge milestone in Bay Area thrash. The early sound was just weird. And the later sound was so unique to the band that Megadeth’s main influence comes from their fame, the fact that Cryptic Writings was one of metal’s surprise best sellers in the late 90’s, and the more tuneful and mainstream Risk from 1999 also pushed brisk sales.
Ironically, Dave Mustaine has played the biggest role in pushing me back towards Metallica of late. There’s only so much you can hear a legendary performer like Mustaine keep mentioning his old band and comparing himself to them. It’s honestly pitiful at this point for a 61-year-old man to keep whining about being kicked out of a band he was in more than 40 years ago—especially since this isn’t like Pete Best being kicked out of The Beatles. Mustaine didn’t fade into obscurity after getting fired from Metallica, but went on to form his own influential band with multiple platinum albums. His constantly bringing up Metallica has reached the point where he is making himself less cool.
My journey from Metallica to Megadeth and back again
A little background on my own history with these two bands. I actually heard Megadeth before I heard Metallica, through a little track called “Angry Again” on the first CD I ever owned, the Last Action Hero soundtrack. When I first heard Metallica it was also through a soundtrack, with their song “I Disappear” from Mission: Impossible 2. Hearing Metallica for the first time was a memorable experience. My reaction to “I Disappear” was that it reminded me of that Megadeth song, but with James Hetfield’s razor-sharp, growling vocals. Eventually I heard “Enter Sandman” and bought the Black Album, then Ride the Lightning. I was familiar with most of Metallica’s classic albums before I began working my way through the Megadeth catalogue.
As a guitar player, it’s noteworthy that I learned how to play a number of Metallica songs, but almost no Megadeth. Part of that, I’ll admit, is simply that Megadeth songs tend to be more technically complex and harder to play. I can play the opening riff of “Holy Wars… The Punishment Due”, but that’s about it. Despite being an old-school metalhead, I mostly sing and play metal songs by myself on acoustic guitar.
But I think there’s more to it than the fact that Metallica’s riffs tend to be easier. I’ve often heard record producers say that you know a song is great when you can strip it down to piano or acoustic guitar, and it still sounds good. When you get right down to it, I think Metallica are better overall songwriters.
Comparing the music
I was reminded of that this year with the release of Metallica’s latest album 72 Seasons. When I first heard lead single “Lux Æterna” I thought it was fine—reminiscent of their early material, but nothing to write home about. The first time I tried listening to the album, I got through the title track and half of “Shadows Follow” before turning it off. Nothing was really grabbing me. But when I listened to the whole album a couple weeks later on a bus ride from Toronto to Kingston, everything just clicked.
“Sleepwalk My Life Away” might have been the turning point. The opening bass riffs by Robert Trujillo start us off with a great groove, before the song settles into the kind of catchy, mid-paced chugging rocker that is often the high point of any Metallica album (“Now That We’re Dead” was my favourite track on their previous effort Hardwired… To Self-Destruct). The 72 Seasons album, including “Lux Æterna”, kept growing on me, getting better with each listen. The title song is the best opener to a Metallica album since the 1990s. “If Darkness Had a Son” has a neat hook with Hetfield’s shout of “Temptation!” The closing epic, “Inamorata”, features a great use of loud-soft dynamics, as the band settles down for a cool breakdown partway through. The subtleties of Hetfield’s vocals on the chorus show once again how as a singer, he’s like a fine wine, consistently getting better with age.
Compare this to Megadeth’s latest release The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead! It’s a good album, with characteristically dazzling guitar work and interesting lyrics. Starting with the Black Album, Metallica’s lyrics tended to focus more on inner turmoil than sociopolitical issues, literature, or fantastical themes. Mustaine’s lyrics, however, still tend to focus on such external themes, which I like. “Mission to Mars” makes for a cool little science fiction epic. “Dogs of Chernobyl” explores the fear of nuclear winter, a classic theme for a band whose very name refers to a term for one million deaths, particularly in nuclear warfare. But all in all, I have to say that I prefer 72 Seasons. The songs have stuck with me more and have better hooks. Where Hetfield has greatly improved as a vocalist over the years, the same cannot be said for Mustaine. Admittedly, the latter fought a battle with throat cancer in 2019, so I’m glad he can still sing at all. But while I’ve always enjoyed Mustaine’s vocal style, he has never been as adept as Hetfield at ballads or songs requiring greater subtlety.
The respective musical quality of Metallica and Megadeth has varied over the years. A conversation about their latest records is very different from the one we’d be having 20 years ago, when the most recent releases by each band were St. Anger and The System Has Failed, respectively. While St. Anger has gone down among fans as one of their most hated Metallica records—conspicuous for its lack of guitar solos and Ulrich’s drum sound being reminiscent of banging on a trash can lid—The System Has Failed holds up to this day as a classic Megadeth album, despite initially being planned as a solo album. Mustaine has been the only constant member of Megadeth and exerts almost total control over the band, but other members have played an indispensable role in the quality of the band’s music. What would “Tornado of Souls” be without Marty Friedman’s legendary guitar solo?
Another way to compare Metallica and Megadeth would be to look at their most acclaimed albums, which are surely Master of Puppets and Rust in Peace. You could make a case for either, but I share the opinion that Master of Puppets is the best metal album ever, by anyone. As much as I enjoy Rust in Peace, a comparative strength of Master of Puppets is its use of acoustic intros. These delicate passages were key to some of Metallica’s greatest songs, and from what I can tell, were a rarity in metal circa 1984 when the band recorded “Fade to Black”. Master of Puppets takes the formula of that previous album, Ride the Lightning, and perfects it.
Puppets shows Metallica at their peak in terms of thrash metal songcraft. Just listen to “Battery”, the title track, or “Disposable Heroes”. You also have the sludgy H.P. Lovecraft tribute “The Thing That Should Not Be”, the dark ballad “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)”, and the spacy instrumental epic “Orion”. While Rust in Peace is the most technically accomplished thrash metal album and has more than its share of classics—“Hangar 18” contains some of the best guitar work ever recorded—the songwriting and variety of sounds are superior in Master of Puppets.
Megadeth has recorded some solid albums in the 21st century: United Abominations, Endgame, Dystopia. But none of the songs have stuck with me like Metallica’s best 21st-century tunes: the likes of “St. Anger” (yeah, I said it), “Cyanide”, “Now That We’re Dead”, “Halo on Fire”, “Spit Out the Bone”, “72 Seasons”, “Sleepwalk My Life Away”, “If Darkness Had a Son”, and “Inamorata”. There are good tracks on those Megadeth albums, yet Metallica’s contemporary material tends to be more memorable in the long run. Technically, Mustaine is a superior guitarist to Kirk Hammett, but I’ll admit that even Hammett’s solos on 72 Seasons have been growing on me. He’s still doing his wah-drenched E minor pentatonic solos, but they honestly work. It can be easy to forget how much I tried to emulate Hammett as a guitarist when I was learning how to play. I’m still nowhere near him, but the relative simplicity of his style, at least compared to a lot of metal guitarists since, is part of its appeal.
For a long time, I preferred Megadeth over Metallica. Part of that came down to the fact that Metallica were so massively popular, while some of their recent albums seemed weaker than Megadeth’s at the time. Megadeth being the underdog made me want to root for them, especially since their material was more technically advanced than Metallica’s. I also liked the sneering whine of Mustaine’s vocals. At this point, though, I’ve come back to Metallica. It can be easy to take Metallica for granted. But when you look back at their discography, the sheer amount of classic songs alone puts them over Megadeth.
Mustaine’s foot-in-mouth disease
Finally, there’s Mustaine’s increasingly obnoxious political views, which finally reached breaking point for me during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Mustaine has always suffered from a big mouth, notoriously causing a sectarian riot in Belfast at a 1988 concert after he drunkenly dedicated a song to “the cause” and added, “Give Ireland back to the Irish!” He’s always had a libertarian streak, but in the 2000s, he became a born-again Christian and increasingly supported Republican politicians. Then he began to embrace right-wing conspiracy theories and was a repeat guest of Alex Jones. The title track of United Abominations described the UN as “where our so-called friends get to stab us in the back and we pay 22% of their tab to host our enemies here at home,” The title track of Endgame raved about a New World Order, FEMA camps, and American citizens being implanted with RFID chips—the same themes expressed in an Alex Jones film also called Endgame.
So it was no great surprise when Mustaine railed onstage at a concert in Camden, N.J against the “tyranny” of wearing masks during a pandemic. Keep in mind that in September 2021, more than 27,000 people had died of COVID-19 in New Jersey. I’m capable of enjoying the art of people who have political views I don’t agree with, or who are loathsome individuals. But Mustaine’s onstage tirade against masks was just the latest in a long series of asinine statements that are increasingly tiresome.
There was also Mustaine’s firing of Ellefson in 2021 and removal of his bass tracks from The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead! after alleged sexual misconduct—or as Ellefson described it, after explicit videos were released without his consent. I can see why Mustaine fired Ellefson; it’s always been the Mustaine Show, he doesn’t tolerate anything that reflects poorly on the band, and there’s also the fact that Ellefson filed an unsuccessful lawsuit against Mustaine in 2004. A band that has reached the level of success Megadeth has is really a business enterprise. Still, Ellefson was the original Megadeth bassist, and for a guy with such a long and public grudge against his unceremonious firing from Metallica, Mustaine sure has treated many of his band members in a similar way.
What really cemented my shift back to Metallica was not just Mustaine’s inability to get over being fired from them, but the fact that Metallica released a strong new album. Bashing Metallica has been popular for a long time among metalheads, who have accused them of “selling out” since the ’80s. By this point, though, I would say things have come full circle and it’s now cooler to defend Metallica.
I saw Megadeth live and it was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen. Metallica, on the other hand, remain the only member of the Big Four I have not seen, due to the fact that the cost of Metallica tickets now starts at half a month’s rent. But there comes a point at which a wealthy rock star in his 60s, who can’t get over being fired from his old band four decades ago, becomes so pathetic that his own band you’ve always loved starts to lose its appeal. At a certain point, the quantity of Mustaine’s whining about Metallica transformed into a qualitative change in my feelings towards Megadeth. The result is I’m now back on Team Metallica.
Of course, I still like both bands. You don’t have to choose one or the other; it’s just fun to compare. I’m sure Mustaine would be pissed to hear more comparisons between Megadeth and Metallica. But he’s honestly brought it upon himself at this point. People might say that interviewers are the ones who keep bringing up Metallica, but Mustaine could simply refuse to answer those questions. Jodie Foster used to cancel interviews with media outlets that asked her about John Hinckley’s assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan. The fact that Mustaine keeps talking about Metallica suggests that he has no self-control and can’t stop himself from complaining about this. For a man of his age, the cool thing to do would be to laugh it off, say it’s water under the bridge, that he wishes Metallica the best, and move on. He’s proven utterly incapable of doing so.
The lesson of Dave Mustaine is that you only torture yourself by holding on to past grudges. All the heroes of classical tragedies had a hamartia, or tragic flaw. If Mustaine has a tragic flaw, it’s his inability to move on. On the other hand, tragic heroes in drama meet with legitimately sad endings. I can imagine worse fates than ending up as a rich old rock star, whose biggest problem is that his former band sold more records than him.