DAVID ELLEFSON Says It's 'Really Nice' To Have Been Able To Spend 'Several Years' Making New MEGADETH Album

MEGADETH bassist David Ellefson spoke to Sonic Perspectives about the progress of the recording sessions for the band's follow-up to 2016's "Dystopia" album. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "We have a credo — we talk about what we've done; we don't talk about what we're gonna do. And it's kind of a good way to roll, because things can change.

"Dave [Mustaine, MEGADETH leader], I guess, has revealed a potential album title, maybe a songtitle or two, but everything is a work in progress. So until it's done, done, done… We've literally changed album titles, like, right before we were ready to hit the print button and start printing the thing.

"But it's sounding great, and it's coming along well. And it's been fun to have the time," he continued.

"You've got your whole life to make your first album and about nine months to make your second one. And this has been really nice, after all these years, and album sixteen, to have several years to make this album, from where we started.

"We were coming off 'Dystopia'. I think we raised the bar for MEGADETH [with that album]. We kind of recalibrated the sound of the band, and the lineup, of course, is incredibly skilled, [with] really great players. So I think we kind of reframed the whole thing, and that was a really great place to start from, because the bar was very high. And it's, like, how do we raise it from there? So it's good to have the time that we've had to work on it."

This past February, Mustaine said during an episode of his Gimme Radio program "The Dave Mustaine Show" that he was "almost done" recording the vocals for the new MEGADETH LP. He also said that he had just received "a really cool lyric" from Ellefson that he was planning to turn into a song. In addition, he revealed that the album will include an as-yet-undisclosed cover track.

In January, Ellefson told the "Rock 'N' Roll Icons With Bode James" podcast the recently announced working title for MEGADETH's upcoming album, "The Sick, The Dying And The Dead", will likely end up getting changed before the LP is released.

The early sessions for the LP took place in 2019 with co-producer Chris Rakestraw, who previously worked on "Dystopia".

"Dystopia", whose title track was honored in the "Best Metal Performance" category at the 2017 Grammy Awards, marked Brazilian guitarist Kiko Loureiro's recording debut with MEGADETH.

MEGADETH's current lineup is rounded out by 46-year-old Belgian-born-and-now-Los-Angeles-based drummer Dirk Verbeuren, who had played with SOILWORK for more than a decade before joining MEGADETH.