We've all heard the press releases and reviews of this album – hell, I heard the bloody things from over in Malaysia and you couldn't find a Megadeth album anywhere in that country. Greatest thing since Rust in Peace, Dave's remembered how to write thrash metal again, guitar work is the best we've heard from the band in ages, Mustaine is really happy with the new lineup and it should stay stable... am I the only one this sounds painfully familiar to?
Cast your minds back, if you will (or can) to 2001 and the release of The World Needs A Hero. While in 2009 it's pretty much been forgotten (and rightfully so, there was about two minutes worth of original stuff on there, and that's including the riff Dave reused from Metallica's “Call of Ktulu” - I'll grant him that since he co-wrote it), at the time it was being praised to the bloody heavens as Dave remembering how to do metal. Watch the (really, really excellent) Behind The Music DVD if you don't believe me. Fastforward to 2004 and the release of The System Has Failed. Allow me to pull a quote from a copy of Terrorizer magazine of the time: “Now Megadeth have returned with Mustaine in full command. Have I mentioned that [System] is the best thing they've done since Rust in Peace”? Hell, it was only three years later and that same interview admitted that Hero was “destined to be a blot on the copybook”. Another three years pass and United Abominations came out and suddenly everyone had forgotten all about System. Now I'll admit, this one even had me excited, as I grabbed it from the store and took it straight to the home of a good friend and absolute Megadeth fanatic. For all of eleven minutes we sat enthralled and headbanging as we heard what were, well, two of the best songs since Rust in Peace. Then we realised that Mustaine had basically used all his good riffs on “Sleepwalker” and “Washington is Next!” and the rest of the album (apart from a couple of decent riffs) was as bland as any of the stuff released in the interim. Which neatly brings us to today.
Fine, I'll admit it – Endgame is indeed the best album since Rust in Peace, which (may I remind you/alert you to, depending on who you are) is still in my Incredibly Exclusive Greatest Ever Super Duper Metal Albums list and has been since the rapid fire opening riff of Possibly The Best Thrash Song Ever, “Holy Wars... The Punishment Due” burst out of the speakers at my cousin's house after I bought the album so long ago. Endgame isn't Rust in Peace though. But 1990 Mustaine couldn't have written an album like Endgame with its deliberate hooks, pretensions to an epic war story feel, and attempts at balladry – something Megadeth have never been any more than extremely average at. And 2009 Mustaine couldn't write an album like Rust in Peace, but by god he's tried.
And this is why no matter how shit the 90s may have been for Megadeth, there's a very strong argument that they were stronger artistically, because Mustaine was experimenting, trying new things. The album commonly referred to as Megadeth's St. Anger, Risk, wasn't given that name for nothing. But Mustaine is no longer innovating and working hard in his once all-consuming attempts to be better than Metallica. He's given up on that and has admitted such in interviews. Whether he wants to put it like this or not, it seems pretty obvious from where I'm standing: Mustaine's making records to please the fans. He may know that Rust in Peace was his best work and that he'll never better it, but what matters is that Megadeth fans know Rust in Peace was the band's best work, and everything Mustaine writes is geared toward making Megadeth 2009 sound as much like Megadeth 1990 as possible, while including a few pop hooks and obligatory shit ballads to also try and keep the fans who came onboard for Countdown to Extinction and Youthanasia. He might sound kind of angry – and who knows, he could really be angry, I'm sure all anyone needs to do to get him riled up is show him his Lars-edited interview from Some Kind of Monster – but it sounds forced, and to me comes off as another attempt to sound like old-school Megadeth. Of course, it's not just “Rust in Peace plus a bit of Youthanasia” he's trying to do here - “Bite the Hand” strongly recalls “Wake up Dead”, “1,320” sounds like a crunchier “Rattlehead” with a worse chorus and “Dialectic Chaos” sounds like someone who heard “Into the Lungs of Hell” once or twice trying to remember how it went, to make sure the fans of their other good albums aren't unsatisfied.
Can we judge the album on its own merits though? In spite of a few truly terrible songs – the worst of which is “The Hardest Part of Letting Go...”, it's a passable thrash album. Yes, Megadeth can be called a thrash metal band again with a straight face, despite the mid-paced mediocrity which takes up about two-thirds of this album. Mustaine still plays guitar like Mustaine, and the addition of ex-Nevermore man Chris Broderick on second guitar (the only lineup change, making this the album with the least amount of instability since – heh – The World Needs a Hero) was an inspired choice, as his fluid shredding fits into the music well while still maintaining individuality and complementing Mustaine's work, something we haven't really heard from a Megadeth second guitarist since the legendary Marty Friedman decided he'd rather play J-pop than the mediocre hard rock Mustaine was writing when he left. It's a decent album, but I thought the metal world had learned by now that if you want a good new thrash album in the late 2000s you're much better off listening to one of the fresh young bands popping up than one of the original bands trying badly to rehash their older work – hell, let's face it, nothing released by the American Big Four in the last five years has been great, and of the German Big Three only Kreator are still consistently writing great music.
As usual, I feel the need to look to the future to close out this review. If the title of the record is accurate, Megadeth fans can be satisfied that the band did indeed end on a pretty good note rather than the shitty attempt at a return to form that they were left with last time the band broke up (for all of about six months – hell, most people don't even remember that Mustaine did disband Megadeth back in 2002 after he fucked his arm). But if a bung arm won't dissuade Mustaine from making music, I doubt much else will – perhaps Metallica breaking up, but that's about all I can think of. So here's my prediction, and I fully intend to keep this saved and timestamped so I can pull it out at appropriate moments:
2012. Megadeth release a new album. It's faster and heavier than anything they've written in twenty years. The guitar playing's great. It's their best album since Rust in Peace. The fans love it. Mustaine acts really smug and arrogant in interviews supporting the release. Reviewers declare that while the last album was alright, Megadeth have really returned with this one. Endgame is written off as another footnote in the history of the band as Abominations,System and Hero were before it, and the whole cycle starts anew... while I sit back and let anyone who will listen know that I FUCKING CALLED IT.
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