Meursault & Megadeth

“Can I offer you something while we talk? You wanna beer or something? Wine?”
We’re backstage at the 02 Centre in Greenwich, two hours before showtime: 17.30. Dave Mustaine walks back from the fridge with a Heineken – I asked for a beer.
Megadeth wasn’t a thing for me until recently, until last year, a bewildering and unexpected flashbang: I’ve become a fan, and dammit I’m going to trawl through all the albums over thirty-five years and get a real handle on the band, ranking the albums in order of favourites – a protean list that shifts with repeated listens. From the opening frantic jagged riffs of Holy Wars…The Punishment Due (Rust In Peace, 1990, fourth album), I was hooked. Urgent, visceral, crowd-moshing thrash metal: a new obsession, a compulsion.

Noble Rot, Issue 18, November 2018