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Megadeth Back To The Beginning absence, explained: they were never asked. Dave Mustaine says the band didn’t know Ozzy Osbourne’s farewell concert existed until the lineup was already set, and only heard about it when a story broke that one act had been dropped for demanding money for the charity show. ‘That was not us,’ he says. ‘We were over in Europe playing.’ He is, fifteen months later, entirely gracious about the Osbournes, who he says ‘were there for me’ through cancer. It’s the rest of the music business he has a problem with: ‘They’re just afraid to come up and talk to me. I don’t know, it’s kinda lame.’

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‘That Was Not Us’: Why Megadeth Missed Villa Park

Speaking to Metal Hammer, Mustaine said Megadeth were not invited to Back To The Beginning and weren’t aware of it until the bill had been assembled, learning of the show through reports that an unnamed band had been dropped for asking to be paid.

Back To The Beginning was the biggest one-day bill in metal history: Metallica, Guns N’ Roses, Tool, Slayer, Pantera and a dozen more at Villa Park in Birmingham on July 5, 2025, with Ozzy on his throne for the last songs he ever sang in public. He died seventeen days later. Megadeth, a band that owes as much to Sabbath as any thrash act alive, were not there, and fans noticed.

Mustaine’s account is simple. ‘What we had heard was some scuttlebutt in one of the bands, and they never said who it was, they had asked for an exorbitant amount of money,’ he said. ‘And I guess that was something that was in really bad form. I don’t know any more about it, but that was not us. We were over in Europe playing.’

That’s the whole explanation, and it’s worth reading carefully. It isn’t a feud. It isn’t a scheduling conflict he turned down. The call never came, and the first he heard of the show was a rumor about somebody else behaving badly. For a man whose history with Metallica, the semi-headliners that night, is the most famous grudge in the genre, he’s conspicuously not making it about that.

Roses For Sharon: Why There’s No Grudge

Mustaine said he would ‘do anything’ for Sharon Osbourne, who organized the show, because the Osbournes reached out to him during his 2019 throat cancer treatment, and he’d done the same for her in 2002.

‘I’m all about that, because they were there for me,’ he said. When Sharon was diagnosed with colon cancer in 2002, ‘I sent her a bunch of roses and said get well soon because of her kindness.’ When his own diagnosis became public in June 2019, the Osbournes were among the first to get in touch. ‘I thought it was really commendable.’

The show raised an estimated six to seven million pounds for Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Acorns Children’s Hospice and Cure Parkinson’s, and an edited concert film reaches theaters next week. Mustaine’s position is that none of that is diminished by Megadeth’s absence, and he isn’t asking anyone to feel bad about it.

‘A Self-Ostracised Loner’: The Part Where He Doesn’t Hold Back

The edge in the interview isn’t aimed at the Osbournes. It’s aimed at an industry Mustaine says keeps its distance: ‘They’re just afraid to come up and talk to me. I don’t know, it’s kinda lame.’

He doesn’t, he said, ‘have a lot of guys that I’ve kept up with in the music business.’ Then: ‘I feel like a self-ostracised loner, sometimes.’ From a man who co-founded Metallica, built one of thrash’s Big Four from the wreckage of being fired from it, and has spent forty-three years being the most quotable person in the room, it’s a strikingly plain admission.

The memoir extract Metal Hammer ran alongside the interview sharpens it. Writing about James Hetfield calling him in 2019, Mustaine says: ‘Hearing from him just as I was about to begin treatment, when I was at a pretty low point, meant a lot to me.’ And then, to everyone who didn’t call: ‘Be a human being.’ Pick up the phone, he writes. Reach out, privately, one to one. The Villa Park snub reads differently with that beside it. He wasn’t angry he missed the show. He noticed, again, who didn’t pick up the phone.

Will Megadeth Get A Farewell Show Of Their Own?

Asked whether Megadeth might stage their own star-studded send-off, Mustaine said he’d ‘love to do something like that’ but worries it would be ‘a little self-serving,’ adding that ‘it’d have to be done with grace and style, like the Osbournes.’

So: probably not, and if it happens, not soon. The farewell is the tour itself. ‘I love the idea of what we’re doing: touring,’ he said. That’s consistent with how Mustaine has run the band for four decades, and with a career in which the biggest moments were usually ones he engineered rather than ones he was invited to.

The bar he set, ‘grace and style, like the Osbournes,’ is also a tell. He watched Back To The Beginning from Europe and came away not bitter about the guest list but impressed by the execution. If anyone in his circle wants to give him the night Ozzy got, that’s the brief.

Where The Megadeth Farewell Stands

Megadeth’s seventeenth and final album, Megadeth, was released in January 2026 and became the first record in the band’s history to top the Billboard 200; the farewell tour began last summer and continues through the UK and Europe in March and April 2027 with Black Label Society and Testament.

The self-titled record closes a run that started with Killing Is My Business in 1985, and it’s a strange kind of justice that the band’s only No. 1 album is the last one. The memoir, In My Darkest Hour, was published by Da Capo last month and went straight onto the New York Times bestseller list; it’s Mustaine’s second book, and the one about the cancer.

The 2027 European leg runs as follows. US fans who want to see the band one more time should watch this page: North American farewell dates beyond the 2026 run haven’t been announced.

Note the March 18 date: Birmingham. Megadeth will play Ozzy’s hometown eight months after they weren’t invited to his farewell there.

TL;DR

• Dave Mustaine says Megadeth were never asked to play Back To The Beginning and didn’t know about it until the lineup was set; they were touring Europe.
• He wants it on record that the band reportedly dropped for demanding payment ‘was not us,’ calling that behavior ‘really bad form.’
• No grudge toward the Osbournes: he’d ‘do anything’ for Sharon, who reached out during his 2019 cancer treatment; he sent her roses during hers in 2002.
• The sharp words are for the industry: ‘They’re just afraid to come up and talk to me. It’s kinda lame.’ ‘I feel like a self-ostracised loner, sometimes.’
• A Megadeth all-star farewell show is unlikely; he calls the idea ‘a little self-serving.’ The final album topped the Billboard 200 in January; the farewell tour hits the UK and Europe in March–April 2027, including Birmingham on March 18.

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Alex Sandra (Aleksandra Marshaniia) is a metalcore Georgian-American artist based in San Francisco and Los Angeles. Alex’s music is inspired by a diverse range of artists and styles, from the raw emotion of Architects to the pageantry of Lady Gaga. Her lyrics are honest and direct, inviting listeners to join her as she tells stories […]

Prolific Swedish speed metal quintet Armory are flying the genre’s flag on their fourth album, Echoes of the Astrolith. Coming just a year after their Black Star EP, Echoes features Armory’s new singer, C. Rostoff, who has the pipes to match the band’s ’80s-style ambitions and swagger.

The album, which you can listen to below, doesn’t break new ground so much as it rips into familiar territory with fervor and glee. Guitarists N. Ingelman and A. Holmström are a ripping pair, utilizing a twin-guitar approach that lets the songs soar without giving up speed. On songs like “The Final Invention,” they slow things down into darker, brooding territory, which is a welcome juxtaposition to the solos of “Pillars of Fire” or the divebombs of “Cosmic Dreams.”

”After four long years in the making, we are finally ready to unveil our new album, Echoes of the Astrolith to the world!” Armory tell Decibel. “This one was a special album to make, as we had the first lineup change in the history of the band during the process when we got our new singer Chris Rostoff on board. The result is an album with catchier vocals, set against a backdrop of even darker riffs than usual. We hope that these new tunes of ours will bring much listening pleasure to Earth and mankind!”

Listen to an early stream below via Decibel. Echoes of the Astrolith is out on October 23 via Dying Victims Productions.

The post Full Album Stream: Armory – “Echoes of the Astrolith” appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

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