Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine said back in January that the band would maybe hit the studio sometime toward the middle of this year for a new album. Though recently in an interview with Trunk Nation, Mustaine said he didn't want to rush the new album and that he wanted to make it as good as Dystopia. Now bassist David Ellefson is echoing those sentiments, saying there likely won't be a new album this year.
Ellefson says he feels like because the band took the time with Dystopia, it turned out awesome. As opposed to Super Collider and Risk, which he says were a bit rushed and were pretty universally panned upon release.
"No, I don't think so. One thing we learned from the last several albums, and I think confirmed with Dystopia, is with Dystopia we just took as much time as we needed to really make a great record. And some of the couple of records before, with Super Collider in particular, we had tour dates. I think we came into the studio a little early on that record. And we had a similar experience on Risk where we came off a big tour like Cryptic Writings and we went in the studio probably a bit premature.
The only difference now is you can start to write and record, and because it's digital, you have the opportunity to go back and revisit some things and tweak 'em a bit, which is a lot easier to do than it was back in the big, expensive studios and analog-tape days. But with that said, you wanna be prepared and you wanna have the material in motion, really in good shape. And with Dystopia, we found that taking the time to just make the record as good as it really can possibly be, that stuff is so important. So I think, along the lines of Dystopia, we're gonna make sure the record's great rather than just having to hurry up and put it out."
The new album will also be the first to feature ex-Soilwork drummer Dirk Verbeuren, who is an absolute goddamn monster behind the kit.