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'Endgame' puts Megadeth back on the charts
The Advocate
When I learned that both Muse and Megadeth were releasing albums on the same day, even as a long-time Megadeth fan, my excitement for Muse’s “The Resistance” was much stronger. Considering each band’s prior releases – the fresh-sounding “Black Holes and Revelations” from Muse and the highly disappointing “United Abominations” from Megadeth – what was I to expect? While “The Resistance” ends up sounding like Muse was trying to increase their already large worldwide popularity by selling short musicianship and tuning up the overdone Coldplay/Radiohead-like alternative sound, Megadeth’s “Endgame” turns back to what they do best: heavy metal.
The overall production quality of the record is about as strong as “United Abominations,” but the songs are just so much better. While writing and recording for “Endgame,” Megadeth front-man Dave Mustaine said he was more excited about how the album was turning out than at anytime since 1992’s “Countdown to Extinction” and 1990’s “Rust in Peace.” Those releases are still considered the band’s masterpieces, so I had a hard-time taking those words to heart at first. This seems to be Megadeth’s third or fourth evolution, going from progressive/thrash in the mid-80s (when Metallica was still stealing Mustaine’s riffs), to commercial metal in the early ’90s, to a short radio-friendly period in the late ’90s, and finally back to where they started in the early 2000s. However, this really is their best album in years.
The album opens with an instrumental that serves as a killer warm-up for things to come. The first vocal track, “This Day We Fight!” sounds like it belongs on “So Far, So Good . . . So What?” and is a strongpoint of the album, from the riffs, to the multitude of solos, to the great chorus lines. “1,320” and “Bite the Hand” are also very strong songs that are fast but not dark or heavy – just good metal. If there was one deal breaker on “United Abominations,” it was that every song on the album had the same theme (with the exception of “Sleepwalker” – great song) of corruption, greed, chaos overseas, and despicable action from super-powers unseen by the common-folk. There was no lyrical change or interesting elements, and the vocals seemed crowded with the same thing, over and over again. Compare those lyrics with “Endgame,” and there are some similarities (“Head Crusher,” for example, is about the recent torture scandals), mostly because Mustaine has always kept up with the political climate – perhaps more so than any musician in the last 20 years – but this album also goes back to featuring songs about things other than politics, a concept that seemed to escape Mustaine while writing “United Abominations.”
If there is a weak point to the album’s songs, “44 Minutes” and “Bodies” just don’t do it for me. The other problem I have is that every song runs four minutes and change or less, with the exception of the title track. While short songs make for good, radio-friendly stuff, longer tracks tend to show some patience in song evolution that is tough to get with shorter songs.
Mustaine took the production quality and sound of “United Abominations,” and wrote songs with elements of every album from 1985’s “Killing is my Business” all the way to 1994’s “Youthanasia,” — and “Endgame” is the result. Is it a top-five Megadeth album? No, but it certainly lies somewhere right outside that boundary, and should be a welcome addition to the CD rack of anyone appreciative of great songwriting.
Rating: 5/5
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