Megadeath – Countdown to Extinction (1992)

I just realised that this is already the third album in a row in this blog that was released in 1992. All of these albums also feature quite heavy guitars. It either says something about the musical fashions of the time, or something about me as a young music listener. Megadeath was definitely one of the bands I listened to a lot at the time. Back then, everything featuring monsters and heavy guitars was really interesting to me, being a nine year old Finn starting to get interested in playing the guitar. However, I was never into growl singing, so Megadeath and Metallica were pretty much the heaviest stuff I would listen to. My first Megadeath album was probably this album's follower Youthanasia, but Countdown to Extinction was also one of my absolute favourites back then. Nowadays, I would hardly listen to this album if it wasn't because of this blog.


I don't know exactly what it was that made these bands so cool for pre-teen boys in Finland, but these bands and their music was everything back in the day. I remember drawing band logos to my notebooks in school, I let my hair grow longer even though it didn't look cool at all with my thin brown hair and I was just fascinated by horror aesthetics of the album covers and T-shirts.

Megadeath frontman Dave Mustaine had left Metallica at the beginning of their career and started his own band. To me, This band was always second to Metallica, but I was still quite obsessed with Megadeath as well and I had almost all of the albums. My musical preferences have since changed quite a bit, but even now I can see why I would've liked this music. The songs are nicely melodic and the guitars are masterfully played. I even got to see Megadeath live in Helsinki in mid-90's.

The album starts with fast tempo drums and guitar riffs in the song Skin O' My Teeth. Mustaine's nasal vocals don't maybe carry as much strength as would be ideal, but his voice sounds quite evil with its shrillness, which is quite appropriate for this kind of music. Symphony of Destruction is one of the biggest hits the band ever had. The malicious sounding melody is beautifully twisted and the vocals are really appropriately evil in this one. The chorus is very catchy as well. Architecture of Aggression has some machine guns in the beginning and when the dry overdriven guitars come in, the mood stays pretty much on the violent side. Foreclosure of a Dream shows a more melodic side of the band. There are even some acoustic guitars in this song and the melodies are quite progressive. Sweating Bullets was one of my favourite songs from the album back in the day. I even learned to play the intro when I really couldn't play that well yet. The spoken-word verse is excellent, showing similarities between Dave Mustaine's and Axl Rose's vocals. This Was My Life has a slightly more aggressive tone again. Machine gun guitar riffs dominate the mood. The title-track Countdown to Extinction has some melodic bass work. This was also one of the songs that I would frequently listen to as a kid. It has some excellent melodies that I was always into. Psychotron has probably the heaviest groove on this album. Captive Honour has some excellent progressive elements and quite ridiculous guitar solos. The album ends with Ashes in Your Mouth, which almost has free jazz style melodies in some parts. Shows the full talent of the songwriting team.

I really remember some of the Megadeath music videos well, since they were playing quite a lot on MTV in my youth. Me and my friends used to record music videos on VHS and watch them over and over again. The music video for Sweating Bullets shows Dave Mustaine with multiple personas talking to himself in an old-school prison cell. The hair on Mustaine is quite ridiculous from today's perspective. The style of the band was, however, the coolest thing ever while growing up.

I don't really listen to Megadeath these days, but I have to say that compared to some other heavy metal albums in my record collection, Megadeath's music is still quite listenable. There's great melodies and the horror aesthetics are not quite as laughable as they could be. This album is still a big part of my personal history.

Listen to the album on Spotify.