New Audio Messages From Members Of ANTHRAX, ARCH ENEMY, ANNIHILATOR Available

The Live Line, a service launched by MEGADETH mainman Dave Mustaine that enables musicians to connect to their audience over the phone, has been updated with new messages from members of ANTHRAX, ARCH ENEMY and ANNIHILATOR. Also available are recent messages from Mustaine, LAMB OF GOD drummer Chris Adler, DREAM THEATER drummer Mike Portnoy and MACHINE HEAD bassist Adam Duce.

Mustaine was one of the featured guests on Indie 103.1 FM's specialty metal program "Chaos with Full Metal Jackie" last Sunday night (January 13). During the interview, Mustaine spoke about The Live Line. "This is not necessarily a new way, but for me, it's definitely a new venture," Mustaine said. "I had started doing interactive voice response with fans, which basically is contacting them through their cellphone, with another company [SayNow] last year, and it gave me an idea. We kind of parted ways based on different things — it just didn't work out — so I started this company with the people from SmartReply called The Live Line, and it's just a way for us to contact the fans, to send messages to them, for them to leave messages for us, for them to get updates from the band and texts, and stuff like that. And also a place where they can do things like… The site started off, as it was developing, by having a popularity poll to see who, out of some of the bands that were up for the European MEGADETH tour, [to] see what the fans thought of them and it helped us in deciding who the band was gonna be for our tour — there was a band called EVILE. And even though there was a band called WARMACHINE that actually had more votes, them being in Canada and stuff like that… they would have been a great choice for us to have come over there, but like I said again, it wasn't necessarily who got the most votes — it was a popularity contest and to see what the promoters and what the fans thought. Having said that, we're looking forward to seeing all of these bands that had that first poll at some point. And we thank them for helping with the launch of the site."

MEGADETH has officially confirmed that the band has parted ways with guitarist Glen Drover and replaced him with Chris Broderick (NEVERMORE, JAG PANZER).

Chris will make his live debut with MEGADETH on February 4 in Finland, where the group — Mustaine, Broderick, drummer Shawn Drover and James Lomenzo on bass — is kicking off a long string of international dates which wrap March 14 in Bangalore, India.

The third installment of Gigantour — the acclaimed traveling heavy music festival launched in 2005 by Mustaine — will kick off April 12 in Denver, CO with headliner MEGADETH, Swedish metal band IN FLAMES, Finland's CHILDREN OF BODOM, Arizona's modern extreme JOB FOR A COWBOY and Oakland, CA heavy power trio HIGH ON FIRE all confirmed. The 29-date trek will criss-cross North America and wraps May 22 in Phoenix, AZ.