CD Review
Megadeth
Dystopia
2016
T-Boy Records/UMe
✰✰✰✰½
Review: Robert Winans
Megadeth’s Dystopia album is a huge step forward from their last album. Their previous work Super Collider was thought by most to be largely an audio audacity, and wondered if their creativity and ability to hold to their moniker of Thrash Legends were going by the wayside. To be fair, Megadeth has been writing iconic albums since 1985, and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that their creativity had its fanbase concerned.
The diehard Megadeth fan base is always looking for more Thrash Metal roots, and Super Collider was certainly a watered down version of what the band is known for.
However nothing could be further from the truth with Megadeth’s newest release in Dystopia. The album is thick and wrought with fast tempo changes. Truthfully, it has that iconic Thrash Metal style to it with blistering guitar work. However, while at the foreground the guitar work is insanely fast and articulately written, where it secretly shines is the tempo. If ever there was a pairing that Megadeth sorely needed to retain its Thrash Metal title, it was calling up Chris Adler from Lamb of God to be the stickman. It’s almost subtle in how it really affects the guitar work, but the tempo shifts are what give the fretwork its layers of complication.
For me personally, “Bullet To The Brain” is what really showed off how dynamic these subtle tempo changes playing off the guitar riffs broke up what would be easier to make more by formula. “Conquer Or Die” leading into “Lying In State” is something that sounds like a complete transitioned movement with arguably perfect solo work leading straight into a grotesquely aggressive machinations of Dave Mustaine demanding to know, “…..there’s no one playing by the rules anymore, how will history portray us?”
Feral growling of Dave Mustaine atop the tempo shifting of Chris Adler and unbridled creativity of Kiko Loureiro fuse seamlessly into what is easily the best album the band has put out in the last decade. The album paints musically as the album cover implies, a post apocalyptic world reflecting on our poor choices politically soaking in an quagmire of its own doubtful questions of right and wrong.”The Threat Is Real” is chalked full of questions about the questionable vanguard helming political system. Even still, its political musings add more than they detract from the apocalypse that Dystopia warns is approaching with musical stylings and artful change ups that will undoubtedly make you come back to listen just to see if you caught every nuance.
Track Listing
01. The Threat Is Real
02. Dystopia
03. Fatal Illusion
04. Death From Within
05. Bullet To The Brain
06. Post American World
07. Poisonous Shadows
08. Conquer Or Die (instrumental)
09. Lying In State
10. The Emperor
11. Foreign Policy (Fear cover)
Megadeth is currently out on tour with Suicidal Tendencies, Children of Bodom, and Havok and will play The Rapids Theater on 3/15/16
