Dave Mustaine has been talking about the guitar work on Megadeth, the band’s final self-titled album and their first record to top the Billboard 200 Chart — and he’s got a clear idea of where complexity becomes a problem.
In a recent interview with Loudwire, Mustaine reflected on what strikes him most about the new record when stacking it up against the band’s earliest material: “Well, there’s a lot of things that run through my head, but I think, as far as the music and everything is concerned, listening to what we just did and comparing it against the very earliest stages of Megadeth, there’s so much, I think, life, in the tracks.”
The album has already drawn praise for its guitar work, with The Guardian noting that the parts are “performed with the kind of technical precision for which Megadeth have long been famed,” while NME points to a collection of “shreddy-guitar solos to make your head spin.” But Mustaine is quick to draw a line between technical and needlessly complicated.
“As far as the guitar is concerned, playing Megadeth music, it’s kind of like a Chinese finger puzzle,” he explained. “Some of the riffs are a little difficult. Sometimes, they border on being difficult to the point where it’s not worth the complexity for the music,” he explained.
He was equally direct about where his own taste sits: “But, you know, there’s a lot of bands that have music that’s like that, and that’s not really one of my particular tastes. When it gets too complicated, I can’t figure it out.”
That nitpicky approach to how riffs are played is something Marty Friedman ran into firsthand when he auditioned for the band, as he recalled in a recently surfaced interview from the early ’90s (via Ultimate Guitar).
Far from feeling confident coming out of the audition, Friedman was convinced he’d blown it entirely: “I thought, ‘Well, if they really are that nitpicky, I must have just really, completely fucked up this audition.’ I played everything in weird positions, but apparently, they thought it was cool, and I quickly learned the way everything really goes. It worked out really good.”
You can watch the full Mustaine interview below.
