In a new chat with Finland’s Chaoszine, Megadeth guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari pulled back the curtain on how the band built Megadeth, the group’s self-titled final studio album, released late last month through Dave Mustaine’s Tradecraft imprint in partnership with Frontiers Label Group’s BLKIIBLK label.
For fans expecting a quick, high-pressure sprint, Teemu Mäntysaari described almost the opposite. The album took time, and the atmosphere inside the room stayed focused and calm: “It was a lengthy process, I guess — 10 months in the studio. [So it was] pretty intense in that sense, but also, I think, very enjoyable, kind of, I’d say pretty relaxed, because we were kind of in this bubble the whole time.”
“It seems like the songs came together pretty spontaneously,” Mäntysaari continued (via Blabbermouth). “A lot of the songs started out as kind of improvised jams with all the guys, and all the bandmembers got involved quite heavily, so that was really nice to have everybody’s contribution included.”
“Going to the recording of the new album, I tried not to stress about it too much,” Teemu explained. “Of course, you could start thinking, what about the legacy of the band? How do you compete with the previous classic albums? But I tried not to think about it too much. Of course, freely taking kind of influence from the different, great eras of the band, but at the same time trying to create something fresh and new. And we felt like trying to include the current bands, really the band sound in there, the sound that we’ve developed now playing together live for a few years, and how tight we’ve gotten together and tried to put that on the album and make the kind of Megadeth album that we would ourselves love to hear as well.”
That mindset becomes even clearer in how pre-production was handled. Teemu said Dave Mustaine wanted the full band involved early, including riff ideas from everyone, and then took the group through a deep catalog study before tracking began.
“My contribution to this album, first of all, was kind of a surprise that Dave wanted to include us bandmembers so much. So pretty early on, he asked me and the guys if we had some riff ideas, and then we should start saving them because at some point we were gonna start recording the album. And so we did,” Mäntysaari recalled.
“And then we basically started pre-production by listening through the whole Megadeth catalog, all the songs, including all the bonus tracks and cover tracks, alphabetically, over 200 songs. We listened, and we made notes, like what we liked in the songs, and what some of the parts were that we could use maybe as an inspiration or a catalyst to inspire ideas for the new album,” he explained. “And Dave was telling us stories, like how he came up with lyrics and little backstories, like how the songs originally came to be. So that was a big inspiration to get the creative minds working.”
“Then we went to the studio late in 2024, and then stayed in the studio until ’25, August, September. In the studio, we had a really nice setup where it was like this one really big room. One corner had the recording equipment in there, all the amps and whatever you need, a recording booth for acoustic guitars and vocals.”
“And then in one side of the big room, we had all our live equipment, so the full live setup, basically, so we could anytime go there and jam with the guys and come up with these ideas, which is then how a lot of the songs kind of started,” Teemu continued.
“We just sat down and maybe had a little snippet of an idea, and then developed that together. Or maybe even didn’t have any idea, but somebody just started playing, and the other guys joined in, and we had the producer recording everything. And then soon we had starting points for a lot of songs.”
The commercial response backed up that approach right away. Megadeth opened at No. 1 on the U.S. chart with 73,000 equivalent album units for the tracking week ending January 29, based on Luminate data. Most of that came from pure purchases, with 69,000 in album sales. It is a strong launch for a closing chapter, and it positions the follow-up to The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead! as both a fan-supported release and a collaborative statement from this lineup.
