When Risk landed in 1999, it split the fanbase of Megadeth down the middle. Straying far from their aggressive thrash metal identity, the band leaned into a sleeker, more radio-friendly sound, and many fans weren’t ready for it. But former bassist David Ellefson has never viewed the album as a mistake. In fact, he sees it as a crucial part of Megadeth‘s evolution and a gateway for new listeners.
“The Risk album is probably the most controversial album in the catalog,” Ellefson admitted in a recent interview with The Metal Forge podcast (via Blabbermouth). “And admittedly, we did not sort of deliver a record that probably we even wanted to because we kind of took for granted, like, ‘Well, we’ll write the heavy metal tunes when we get down to Nashville.’ And then, of course, what happened is we got so involved in the task of writing the other songs for the album that we didn’t have any time to really play the metal tunes.”
That creative shift, he explained, ended up pulling them away from their core identity. “It’s interesting because going through that process, it sort of takes you away from being a metal band. With Cryptic Writings, it worked because we were very much a metal band writing these, say, four songs — ‘Trust’, ‘Almost Honest’, ‘Use The Man’, ‘A Secret Place’, for example; those were the four singles — that were gonna be deliberately aimed at the active rock, American FM radio, because metal was changing, music was changing.”
Looking back on the decision to pursue a more commercial direction, Ellefson framed it as a calculated risk in the face of industry shifts.
“Look, if you’re in any line of work, whether you’re Starbucks or you’re Megadeth or you’re Chevrolet or whoever you are, you have to be aware of market trends, market changes, and be able to adapt to what’s going on or else you’re out of business. So we played the game on Cryptic Writings, and we hit the bullseye and we won. With Risk, we played the game, but there was something else… The music was actually getting heavier, as a friend pointed out… As we were going lighter, Disturbed and Godsmack, and Rob Zombie, and this heavier kind of modern rock, nu metal sound was coming out. Korn was kind of the new Metallica for the nu metal; I call ’em the Metallica of the nu metal movement.”
Not every band in Megadeth’s circle followed suit. “Look. Slayer didn’t change. Testament didn’t change,” Ellefson noted. “I’ll say this: Anthrax, kind of, I guess being forced a bit, ’cause they had a singer change, but John Bush packs a punch, man. I mean, when that guy sings, you listen, ’cause he’s just such a great singer. And so he sort of gave them a jumpstart and a restart in the ’90s just by having that one member change. And when it’s the singer, it matters especially, because it’s kind of the main thing [you hear in a band’s music]. So they also went through it. Out of the ‘Big Four’ [of 1980s thrash metal], Slayer didn’t play the game, while Anthrax, Megadeth, and Metallica did. And then, finally, by the time we got into the 2000s, it was, like, ‘Oh, thank God that decade’s over.’ And look, I’m not complaining about the ’90s. That was our biggest decade. We were very prolific. We had our most successful, and to this day, probably some of our most applauded work with that lineup.”
Still, Ellefson recognizes that Risk holds a special place for some fans, even if it’s divisive. “Look, it was what it was. I remember, and I’ve told this story before, one day a fan hit me, and they said, ‘Why do you guys sort of talk down against Risk?’ They said, ‘I was really young and that was my very first Megadeth album I ever bought. I fell in love with it and I bought every other album since.”
That comment stuck with him. “And I thought, ‘You know what, man?’ I came into Kiss at Destroyer. Now I’ve talked to some people recently, they went, ‘Oh, Destroyer.’ That was like their Risk, you know what I mean? ‘Oh, I couldn’t take Kiss anymore after that,’ because they bought Hotter Than Hell and Dressed To Kill. But I thought about it. I thought, whatever age we’re born, we have no say in that. So whatever kind of coming across our plate, culturally, musically, artistically, that’s where we are at that time. And like this fan said, they bought Risk and then they went and bought every other Megadeth album afterwards, just like I bought Destroyer, and then I bought Kiss Alive!, and then I bought Dressed To Kill and Hotter Than Hell… But it was Destroyer that got me in the game.”
Ultimately, Ellefson believes it’s not about pleasing everyone — it’s about the journey. “And so I thought the same thing was true. It’s like, people like things for different reasons. And some people don’t like things for different reasons, and whatever. It’s a matter of choice. It’s what the good Lord made us. So, you’re not gonna please everybody all the time, and we’re not in that business, to be honest with you. Our business is to create and make things that we like, and hopefully, there’s just enough other sort of black-t-shirt knuckleheads like us who actually are gonna like it too. And then, once the first record comes out, the die is cast. And then from then, it is a bit of a chess game how you traverse the rest of the years of your career, because it would be sad if we just made Killing Is My Business 15 more times. It’s like, what person does that? You grow, you experience new things, and your music reflects that.”
