Earlier this year, Bayonet launched a series where artists from their roster cover a song from The Numero Group catalog. The fourth installment is out today and has Dirt Buyer putting an emo spin on Shira Small’s 1974 jazz gem “My Life’s All Right.”
The post Dirt Buyer – “My Life’s All Right” (Shira Small Cover) appeared first on Stereogum.
One of five bonus tracks scheduled for this new version.
The post Dredg’s 20th Anniversary Edition Of “Catch Without Arms” Will Feature System Of A Down’s Serj Tankian On A Bonus Track appeared first on Theprp.com.
Dave Mustaine sat down with Rolling Stone’s Kory Grow at the Kaufman Music Center in New York on September 8 to mark the release of his memoir, and revealed that two completed Megadeth songs from the final album sessions have never come out. He also spoke about the hand condition that ended the band — and about what he’s hoping for. His words: he’s hoping God is going to heal him, and that some new technology comes along. The audio of the full conversation is out now.
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Start with the actual news, because it’s buried in the middle of the interview.
Asked whether there’s recorded Megadeth music he hasn’t put out, Mustaine said there are bits and parts and pieces. And then the specific:
There are a couple of completed songs from the last album — recorded with James LoMenzo, Teemu Mäntysaari and Dirk Verbeuren — that were never released.
His understanding is that they were meant to be bonus tracks for the label. He isn’t certain. He said there may be a song or something that could see the light of day, and then, characteristically: but I don’t know.
So: two finished Megadeth recordings, made by the lineup that closed the band out, sitting somewhere.
That matters more than it would for most bands because of what the self-titled album turned out to be. It went to number one on the Billboard 200 — the only Megadeth album ever to do it, after forty-three years and sixteen previous attempts. Two unheard songs from those sessions aren’t offcuts. They’re the last two Megadeth songs that will ever exist.
And Mäntysaari only made one album with the band. Anything from those sessions is all there is of him.
LIVE & LOUD: Stream the World’s Hardest Radio Station 24/7Mustaine is 65, and he’s been open about the condition that’s behind the farewell.
He was diagnosed with Dupuytren’s contracture — a condition sometimes called Viking Disease because of how common it is in Northern European populations. Tissue beneath the skin of the palm thickens until it pulls the fingers into a bent position.
The medical description, which for a thrash guitarist is almost unbearably on the nose: the hand ends up held as though it’s clutching an axe that isn’t there.
There is no cure. Treatment can relieve the symptoms and slow how fast it progresses. That’s the whole available picture, and it’s worth stating plainly once.
Asked what retirement looks like, his answer was this. He’s sure he’ll be involved in music to some degree, even if that’s only listening to it. And then:
He’s hoping God is going to heal him. And that some new technology arrives where they tell him to put his hand in a glove and it comes back new.
That would be something, he said. And until then he’s going to keep trying to be hopeful and play the best he can.
I’m not going to editorialise a man’s faith or his hope, and there’s nothing to add to it. He’s said what he’s said and he’s entitled to it.
What I would point out is the second half of that answer, which is the part that sounds like Mustaine rather than a press release. He’s hoping for divine intervention and a medical breakthrough, in the same breath, and he’s going to keep working while he waits for either.
Here’s the part of this that stopped me, and it’s in the archive rather than the new interview.
Speaking to SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation last December, Mustaine explained how the farewell actually got started. His hands were letting him down — and there was the rest of it too, the arthritis through his neck and trunk, the bulging discs, a broken lumbar bone, the fusion up by his shoulders.
His long-standing rule was that when he couldn’t give a hundred percent every night, he’d start winding down.
And then this. During the making of the record he said to his manager: I don’t know how much longer I can do this. My hands are really hurting.
“And I didn’t mean to set the ball rolling. Honestly, I just was making conversation.”
It turned into him talking to the band. Then sleeping on it. Then talking to his family. Then praying on it.
And the answer came back clear — finish the record, see how it does, and if it does well, take one last good tour out.
Forty-three years, and the end of it started with a man mentioning to his manager that his hands hurt. He wasn’t making a decision. He was complaining, the way anyone complains at work, and the machinery around him heard something else and started moving.
There’s a version of that sentence where nobody picks it up and Megadeth are still going. He said it out loud in a room with the wrong person listening.
We Recommend – Megadeth Albums Ranked: All 17, Worst To Best
And this is the detail I’d put on the poster.
Asked how the farewell tour actually feels, Mustaine didn’t dress it up. It’s bittersweet, he said. It doesn’t feel great, and he can tell you that much.
Then he described what happens before he walks out.
There are nights when they take the stairs at the back of the venue. And every single time, on the way up, he says the same thing to himself. He called it a private thing.
“It’s your stage.”
Then he goes up and does his job. The gift, as he put it, that God gave him.
Three words, said privately, on a staircase, every night, by a 65-year-old man with a hand that’s closing up, on the way out to play songs he wrote when he was twenty-two.
Nobody else covering this interview is going to lead with that. It’s the best thing in it.
Worth including because he was asked directly and the answer is more thoughtful than the genre usually manages.
Eddie Trunk put it to him that a lot of veteran artists stay too long and don’t bow out gracefully. Mustaine agreed, and then drew the distinction that matters.
He said there’s no reason to keep playing when you can’t deliver a hundred percent — unless you’re in a bad way financially and you need to. And he noted that by the grace of God he’s been successful, he’s paid his bills, the band all get their cheques on time, and everything is done by the book.
Some people, he said, may have to keep playing because there’s nothing else for them to do.
That’s a man who has clearly thought about the difference between choosing to stop and being unable to, and who knows which side of it he’s on.
And then the line that closes the door on the obvious question: if he can’t do it and has to stop playing with his first love, he isn’t going to go out and try to do it again with somebody else.
No solo band. No new project with a different name on the door. When Megadeth stops, that’s the end of Mustaine as a touring guitarist.
Longer than most people assume.
He told Kerrang! last November that they’re easily talking about touring for another three to five years — and noted, with the resignation that implies, that if it runs that long he’ll be looking at a birthday he’d rather not think about.
He turns 70 in 2031.
The reasoning is practical rather than sentimental. Megadeth are an American band who play everywhere, not weekend warriors working one country, and doing a farewell properly means an enormous amount of ground to cover. Full dates for the run are here.
The conversation was in support of In My Darkest Hour, which came out September 8, 2026 via Grand Central Publishing’s Da Capo imprint, co-written with Joe Layden.
It’s named after the song from 1988’s So Far, So Good… So What! — which Mustaine wrote after Cliff Burton’s death.
The book covers his treatment after being diagnosed with squamous cell carcinoma at the back of his tongue in 2019, and how he went from chemotherapy and radiation appointments straight into hours-long recording sessions to make The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead!. It also deals with his own reckoning with mortality, and where he found refuge.
It’s already generated one significant story — the excerpt in which he addresses David Ellefson’s 2021 dismissal, and writes that the end was probably coming regardless of the scandal.
Seventeen studio albums. Thirteen guitarists. Fifty million records. One Grammy from twelve nominations. And a final album that became the only number one of their career.
The current lineup is Mustaine, James LoMenzo, Teemu Mäntysaari and Dirk Verbeuren. The farewell tour opened in February in Victoria, British Columbia.
Not a bad place to finish, for a man who got thrown out of another band in 1983 and built one of the four pillars of thrash metal out of spite.
He has been diagnosed with Dupuytren’s contracture, a condition in which tissue beneath the skin of the palm thickens and tightens, pulling the fingers into a permanently bent position. It is sometimes called Viking Disease because of its prevalence in Northern European populations. There is no cure, though treatment can relieve symptoms and slow how quickly it progresses.
Yes. Mustaine has confirmed that a couple of completed songs from the sessions for the band’s final self-titled album were never released, recorded with James LoMenzo, Teemu Mäntysaari and Dirk Verbeuren. He believes they were intended as bonus tracks for the label and has said one may eventually come out, though nothing is confirmed.
Mustaine has cited the physical toll, principally the hand condition affecting his playing, alongside arthritis through his neck and trunk, bulging discs, a broken lumbar bone and a spinal fusion. He has said his rule was always to wind down once he could no longer give a hundred percent every night, and that the process began after he mentioned to his manager during the final album sessions that his hands were hurting.
Mustaine has said they are easily talking about three to five more years of touring, noting that a proper farewell requires covering a great deal of ground as an American band who play worldwide. He turns 70 in 2031.
In My Darkest Hour, released September 8, 2026 via Grand Central Publishing’s Da Capo imprint and co-written with Joe Layden, covers his treatment following a 2019 diagnosis of squamous cell carcinoma at the back of his tongue, the making of The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead! during chemotherapy and radiation, and his reckoning with mortality.
Two finished songs nobody’s heard, and three words he says on a staircase every night before he walks out. All the best to him. Keep it locked on the Loaded Radio stream — follow Loaded Radio for daily rock and metal news.
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Nile and Swiss technical thrash pioneers Coroner have announced a co-headline U.S. tour dubbed “Underworld Dissonance,” set to run March 2 through April 11, 2027. Support on the 31-date trek comes from Syn Absence and one additional special guest to be announced. Both bands will perform full headline sets each night.
Nile’s tenth album, The Underworld Awaits Us All, was released in August 2024 via Napalm Records. Recorded at founding mastermind and guitarist Karl Sanders’s own Serpent Headed Studios in Greenville, South Carolina, the LP features Sanders, longtime drummer George Kollias, vocalist/guitarists Brian Kingsland and Zach Jeter, and bassist Dan Vadim Von. Mixing and mastering were handled by Mark Lewis (Cannibal Corpse, Dying Fetus, Whitechapel).
Coroner’s Dissonance Theory was released worldwide Oct. 17, 2025 via Century Media Records. The 10-track, 47-minute LP was recorded by Tommy Vetterli at New Sound Studios in Switzerland and mixed and mastered by Jens Bogren at Fascination Street Studios (Opeth, Kreator, Amon Amarth) in Sweden.
The post NILE & CORONER Announce “Underworld Dissonance” Co-Headline U.S. Tour For March And April 2027 appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.
St. John’s, Newfoundland thrash metal force Within The Realm proudly announces the October 30th release of their debut album “…Of Systemic Decay”, a raw, fast, […]
The post Newfoundland Thrash WITHIN THE REALM Unveils “Into The Night” From Debut Album “…Of Systemic Decay” Out End of Oct 2026 appeared first on Metal-Rules.com.