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‘ You need to wear that brand of sneaker!’ It’ s about nature itself.”
Mustaine can talk philosophy – intelligently and articulately – until the proverbial cows come home. And the attitude he’ s adopted these days is more live and let live – there’ s nothing much that really pushes his buttons anymore. For example, he says, he has a good friend who works at a guitar company – he won’ t name the fellow – who is currently pursuing a completely different path than his own.“ He’ s a Buddhist, and the only way you would know – if you’ re looking for signs – is him having a shaved head, and beads on his wrist perhaps, or maybe his demeanor and how he ' s always so peaceful,” he says.“ Does that bug me? Hell no! And having been brought up as a Jehovah’ s Witness, you want to talk about weirdness? You could tell me that you were a Frisbitarian, and that you believed you were a Frisbee, and when you died you were thrown up onto a roof, and I would say that that sounds far more believable than what I was brought up with.”
Despite the popularity of Atheismtrumpeting theorists like Richard Dawkins, the late Christopher Hitchens, record gallops, from the Trojan-horse-referencing“ Death From Within”(“ Revenge of patient men is sweet and best served cold”) to“ Post American World”(“ If you don’ t like where we’ re going / Then you won’ t like what’ s coming next”),“ Lying in State”(“ What we are witnessing is the decline of Western civilization / Crushing our potential and piling it on, how will history portray us?”),“ The Emperor”(“ You look so perfect but everybody knows / They’ re petrified to say the emperor has no clothes”), to the closing cut, a rousing rendition of the jagged old Fear chestnut,“ Foreign Policy.” Mustaine never dreamed that – after 12 near-miss nominations in his career – that the disc’ s title track would actually win him a coveted 2017 Grammy for Best Metal Performance.
What is the bottom-line message behind Dystopia? What does Megadeth see coming down the pike that its peers don’ t? The Brent Elliot cover painting depicts a skeletal armed cyborg contemplating the smoking, post-apocalyptic ruins of New York City on the horizon, a katana blade in one hand, the Statue of Liberty’ s severed head in the other( the concept was Mustaine’ s).“ What I see is that it’ s still very much the same – we are still responsible for what is going to happen to us,” he says, cryptically.“ So what I think is going on with Dystopia – and my outlook on the
24 illinoisentertainer. com july 2017 and even Real Time HBO host Bill Maher( who’ s usually on perfect political point with most of his beliefs), science and faith can peacefully coexist, Mustaine insists. They’ re not that disparate, or diametrically opposed.“ Plus, music fans don’ t want to be lectured to about religion – that’ s the last thing that a music fan wants to hear,” he says.“ So I try not to bring that stuff up. I’ ll sing about stuff like the things that I believe in, things that are credos, like the lyrics in some of the songs on( Megadeth’ s 1986 sophomore set) Peace Sells … but Who’ s Buying?, which were a lot like Aesop, where there would be a moral and you would learn something from it.”
The vocalist swears he’ s no Nostradamus, but it’ s certainly a Skynet, Terminator bleak future he documents on Dystopia, starting with its machine-gun opening salvo,“ The Threat is Real,” which melds a Middle eastern melody with scathing lyrics that dig into the motivations for ISIS-violent terrorism(“ Your terminal lack of vision / Blinded eyes see no light / A chronic lack of perspective / Their cancer now eats us alive”). The thunderous title track follows, with Mustaine snarling a warning of” What you don’ t know,” the legend goes,“ can’ t hurt you”/ If you only want to live and die in fear / Dictatorship ends starting with tyrannicide / You must destroy the cancer at its root.” And so the
world is – if you don’ t like the way things are going, then you need to do something about it. That’ s why I try to always be there for my fans, even though it’ s uncomfortable, being available on social media sometimes. It’ s hard, because you’ ll be having a great conversation with somebody, and then somebody else will toss something into a thread that’ s just hurtful or not true.” One of his recent thoughtful threads was disrupted by a( talk about Skynet) bot, he adds, which he had to painstakingly delete. Which in itself caused an online discussion.“ A lot of people were saying,‘ Oh, that was a real person!,’ and I was like,‘ Oh, my God! You can’ t possibly believe that that was a real human! That same face has been on 30 different profiles!’”
Mustaine – who, after playing Big Four concerts around the world with his thrashmetal compadres Anthrax, Slayer, and of course Metallica, penned his autobiography, Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir-- treasures that hard-won Grammy. But the kudo he loves the most is the Genesis Award, presented to him in 1993 by Doris Day for raising animal-rights awareness via Megadeth’ s aptly-titled Countdown to Extinction album that year. And he’ s been winning other plaudits lately, too – a Clio for a Megadeth’ s recent virtual-reality campaign, and gold, platinum, and dou-
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