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Album Details
- Artist: Megadeth
- Album: Rust In Peace
- Label: Capitol
- Year of Release: 1990
- ME Rating:
- Reviewed by: solitaryman on 2011-12-09
RecommendWhereas Peace Sells... was an underground landmark and So Far, So Good... was a stepping stone, Rust In Peace was, is and perhaps always will be Megadeth at their most accessible. Some may argue also Mustaine had wrung the most out of the talent he had at hand, the band's upteenth new lineup in a relatively short span. For my money, a finer album's worth of quality metal is hard to come by, from Megadeth or any other band for that matter.
"Holy Wars...The Punishment Due" is, simply put, as fine an introduction and just about as fine a metal blitz you're going to get on Rust. Many dividing lines seperate fans on which lineup displayed Megadeth at their very best, but I for one am sold on Marty Friedman being the finest lead guitarist the band ever had. A bold statement, to be sure, but I think this album has plenty of evidence to support my claim. "Hangar 18" included. Perhaps the band's most well-known song, the laad sections over the 2nd half are mind-bogglingly awesome, the kind of stuff that I'm sure inspired legions to pick up a guitar. "Take No Prisoners" is pure kick ass fun, and "Five Magics" is one of those songs that grooves into your memory like a needle finds the grooves of an LP. "Poison Was The Cure" kinda takes a step back, but "Lucretia" takes two forward, an underrated mid-paced hook-fueled rocker. "Tornado of Souls" gets a bad rap, "Dawn Patrol" is all Dave Ellefson, a simple but memorable bassline moving an understated track forward. "Rust In Peace...Polaris" closes the affair in similar high-quality fashion.
The lineup of Mustaine, Friedman, Ellefson and Menza was Megadeth at their peak, if you ask me. Rust In Peace is the sort of seminal, once-in-a-career album a band can end up spending the rest of their existence trying to catch up to. The true meeting point of youthful enthusiasm and wisened experience. While some may argue that Rust is the band's pinnacle offering, I doubt any fan would want to argue that it is one of their absolute best, and in Mustaine's ongoing competition with his old band, a bit of a dagger in the heart in terms of credibility. While Megadeth it hit big with music that was almost purely true to what they had set about to create from the start, that OTHER band was in the process of shifting their style to the apparent adoration of everyone not in on what Megadeth was laying down.
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on 2012-02-28 CharlesMartel Said:
When Dave Mustaine walked away from Metallica he went on to form Megadeth. Now, apart from the fact he can't spell, Megadeth were, I suppose, a sort of progression from Metallica insofar as they took to the next level everything that Metallica did. Whether you like this sort of thrash metal or not is going to be the key to whether you enjoy any of Megadeth's albums. As for me, I can honestly say that during my musical hiatus I had never knowingly heard anything by Megadeth. That is to say, I might have heard something by Megadeth but didn't know it was them at the time. When my musical hiatus ended, I decided to put that right.
In the end I came to the conclusion that I could take one album of this, and the rest I was going to leave behind. Although I dive into the ocean of metal occasionally, and bring to the surface a big fish, most of the time I stay away from the water. I don't feel I have the time to learn the distinctions between Death Metal, Black Metal, Technical Death Metal, Blackened Death Metal, Symphonic Black Metal, Progressive Metal, Melodic Black Metal, Brutal Death Metal and so on. So, if I hear something I like, then is the time to act, otherwise no.
Megadeth (the urge to spell it properly is becoming almost overwhelming) quickly eroded my patience and I ended up only with "Rust in Peace ", widely touted as their best album and one the best albums of the nineties. Well, I wouldn't go that far. In fact, I wouldn't agree at all. This is OK when you put it on but, unless you have racked the volume up to a level at which it blots out everything else, it quickly kind of fades into the background and enables you to do something else. Now one of the criteria I always adopt in assessing any album is whether it has the power to stop me from whatever it is I am doing, or whether, conversely, it enables me, perhaps even encourages me to be distracted by something else. In short - do you pick up a book when you listen to it or do you put the book down?
Megadeth are a pick-up-the-book sort of band. And when I actually analyse why that should be it soon becomes apparent. Without volume there is little here to detain you. For a start, most of the album consists of a succession of songs whose intention seems to be to showcase the technical abilities of the individual musicians. There is a lot of guitar noodling and some well managed technical drumming, which is nonetheless a bit bland. But what really lets the album down are the lyrics. Wailing on about good and evil and how the world sucks as a consequence is straight from the male white suburban teenagers juvenile imagination, and explains (to him at least) why he has acne and girls dont date him.
At first, this was an album which I thought could represent a genre and offer something. It is a long time since I have played it now and had it not been for this review, it would probably have been a longer time still. Indeed, the only thing which reminded me I had it was the incongruous support Mustaine has given to that right-wing religious nut-job Rick Santorum and his aspirations to be President. What does Mustaine want Secretary for Education? God help us all!!
Rating: 5/10
