The Sick, the Dying... and the Dead!

I am not easily impressed by singles, I've never been, and the main reason for me to even avoid listening singles is exactly the purpose of their existence. I remember that back in the 80's several bands used to release their not-so-heavy songs as singles trying to attract a bigger number of buyers of their new record, many of them were not ready for what the album really contained. It seems like nowadays the strategy is the opposite. When your best effort to recover the sound that brought you to greatness was released 13 ago, you really need to convince your audience that you are still playing aggressive music, and there's where all the hype about this album came from: 2 thrasher singles that magically convinced everyone that 30 years of mediocre music disappeared; all of a sudden, you're that ferocious band from the 80's again.

This album is definitely not bad (if that comforts the fiercest defenders of this record), I'd rather say that it was poorly planned, because it has indeed several songs that are completely worth listening. They could have made a 30 min album with 6 songs that could have been way better that this mediocrity. They could also had developed a bit more some of those good songs to reach about 35 min, a totally worthy release! But somehow Mr. Mustaine thought it was a great idea to make it almost one hour filled of boring, mediocre, corny and weak songs, that's the worst of all, no matter how much they worked at the studio trying to reach a production that sounded strong, half of the songs are ridiculously WEAK! Sick, Dying, Death, Life in Hell, Night Stalkers, Dogs, Célebutante and We'll Be Back... That was more than enough!

But even if Dave had been wise and had decided to release only the aggressive (or at least fast) songs the album would still not be as good as many alienated fans asseverate, the thrasher songs are really simple and easy. Don't get me wrong, I like them a lot but we're talking about fucking Megadeth, this is not the best Dave can do on his guitar, it's clearly that this was effortless for him. I would be completely pleased with those songs if they had been released by Metallica, but not Megadeth, this is the minimum of the capacity of a musician like Mustaine, we know what he is capable of, you can't be conforming with this!

I will not say anyhing about the lyrics or the vocals, Dave is old now and he lost his voice many years ago, he is a throat cancer survivor and he was never the best singer or lyric writer. I'm going to give him credit for still giving his best effort to be a frontman and a singer.

Anyways, this is the same shit that Megadeth sells since 1991 but with some OK songs, the album as a whole is mediocre, not bad, but mediocre. All the people defending this and declaring it as a "fantastic" or "prime" album are either typical fans that will eat everything they have on the plate as long as it has the Megadeth logo on it or, people that couldn't hide they are easily impressed by aggressive music and they followed all the hype from the singles, and now they are refusing to admit they were wrong and were praising the album before time.

I'd like to say I'm disappointed, but I knew this was going to happen, Mr. Mustaine has little respect for his fans (luckily, I'm not one) and I would never fall in any of his marketing strategies. Megadeth is one of those dusty skeletons from the 80's that never gets me excited about new material, I prefer it to be like that because I would have been disappointed many times by now.