Musicbeat

Sweating bullets

Megadeth

Dave Mustaine has led the iconic thrash metal band Megadeth since 1983. The by group recently completed a world Brad Bynum tour celebrating the 20th anniversary bradb@ of the 1992 double-platinum album newsreview.com Countdown to Extinction. Megadeth comes to the Grand Sierra Resort in Reno on Dec. 19.

Guitarist and vocalist Dave Mustaine of metal icons Megadeth.

Megadeth performs with Fear Factory and Nonpoint at the Grand Sierra Resort, 2500 E. Second St. on Thursday, Dec. 19. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. For tickets or more information, visit www.grand sierraresort.com.

For an extended version of this interview, visit www. newsreview.com. You’ve been celebrating Countdown to Extinction’s 20-year anniversary. You did a tour playing it in its entirety. Can you tell me about revisiting it? It’s very interesting when you approach doing an entire record because you have to learn all the songs and sometimes there are songs on there that are very personal, so to relearn them, as crazy as this sounds, is like a bad tooth back into your head, to revisit some of that pain. It’s great to play the songs once you’ve learned them, but when you reintroduce yourself to all that, it’s like slipping back into a crashed car. The tour coming to Reno is in support of the new album, Super Collider. This is going to be our last time playing in Reno until 2015. We’re going to be taking a break. We’ve got some dates lined up next year internationally. When those are done in August, we’re going to start working on our next record. But we want to have enough time between records to write something personal and important. The music is pretty fun and pretty easy. The lyrics are hard. I don’t want to just write some stupid crap. You guys have played Reno a bunch ... [Drummer] Shawn Drover’s first show was in Reno, almost 10 years ago. We played a casino out there. So that was probably a memorable show? For him it was. He went to the hospital that night. He had never used those in-ear monitors before, and they were so loud that they pounded his brains out, and he got vertigo. He came back and I said, “Why’d you have to go to the hospital?” And he said, “I got vertigo.” And I said, “You pussy.” And he said, “It’s only my third show ever.” And I was like, “What did you just say?” If I’d known he’d only done two shows before that, I probably wouldn’t have hired him. But he was so good you would never think that. The portrayal of you in Some Kind of Monster from a few years ago makes you seem like you’re still really bitter about being removed from Metallica— [Woman’s voice: Hello? Hey, can we just keep to the record and tour, please?] OK. It’s a music related question. I was just going to ask what kind of terms he’s on with James and Lars [of Metallica] now, but if that’s a no-go area ... It’s not a no-go area. It’s just really tired. There’s so many great things I’d like to share. How are things with me and James? They’re fine. He wished me happy birthday. I wished him happy birthday. We’re fine. I understand getting frustrated by getting asked about the same things, but for me as an interviewer, it’s frustrating because I have things I’d like to talk you about, and now I’m like, am I going to get interrupted again? For you, is that frustrating? To have your interviews policed like that? Well, let me back up a little bit here. When we agree to do these interviews with people, basically what we do is we talk to them about the tour and the record and stuff like that. We try to stay away from politics, because no matter how I’m portrayed it just sucks. And we try to stay away from the Metallica questions because no matter how I’m portrayed it sucks. And if you want to take a chance at hurting me and putting a question about Metallica or politics, if that’s your bag, go ahead. But I thought we were going along in a great direction. I’m not out to vilify you. I can tell by the sound of your voice that you’re a nice cat. And it’s not that you’re being handcuffed. There’s just so many great things to talk about, and there’s just so many people out there, and it’s like, not another fucking Metallica question. We’re all good. Ω