Megadeth’s David Ellefson: “I’m In The Greatest Thrash Band In The History of the World”

Carter Sterling, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons
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As part of the infamous Big Four of thrash, Megadeth will always hold a special place in metal fans’ hearts and minds. Now, it appears that they’ve got a huge fan in one of their own members: bassist Dave Ellefson, who went on the record saying that he thinks he’s a member in the greatest thrash band of all time.

As reported by Louder, Ellefson was recently asked about the sound of his new band, Sons of Apollo.

“When people come to me, they go, ‘Oh, dude. It’s thrash,’ and, ‘It’s heavy,’ it’s, like, I’m already in the greatest thrash band in the history of the world,” said Ellefson, “so I don’t need to do thrash anywhere else. I do that in Megadeth. I play with the guy who invented the genre…So, to me, when I do other things, it’s fun to expand. And I’m always writing. I bring certain things into Megadeth that I know are fitting, I think, of that style. There’s a lot of stuff I write that’s not, and I don’t bring it there.

“So, quite honestly, the first thing Jeff and I worked on was not some shred Vivaldi neoclassical metal thing; it was not that at all,” he continued. “And I think that, for me, actually, quite honestly, got me really excited, going, ‘Okay, there’s a wide berth here of what we can do’…And I think that’s when we started throwing some ideas back and forth. It just got us all excited going, ‘Wow, this is pretty wide here. We’re not limited to just being a one-trick pony.”

Let us know if you agree with Dave on our social media platforms.

Megadeth have a new album on the way, though when it’ll land hasn’t been determined — in fact, according to a recent interview with bassist David Ellefson, the band might push the whole thing about until after the pandemic.

“We’re working on album number sixteen, and just finishing it up now,” said Dave in an interview with TotalRock Radio, as transcribed by MetalSucks. “We’ve got a big year of touring lined up — festivals in Europe; the big ‘The Metal Tour Of The Year’ is rescheduled for July and August this year; Rock In Rio in Brazil in September. And it’s all confirmed, but it depends on what — COVID has a say in this matter, unfortunately. So there’s this undecided third factor spinning over there with the pandemic that we’re just all doing the best we can to play around that. And the same with the Megadeth release schedule, being able to put things out…”

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Words by Chris Krovatin