Dave Mustaine and his Megadeth bandmates welcomed guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari into the band last year and it seems that he's here to stay. Speaking to the Loudwire Nights podcast (transcribed by Blabbermouth), Mustaine said that Mäntysaari is a perfect fit for the band, going so far as to compare their chemistry to the period in which legendary guitarist Marty Friedman was a member of Megadeth.
"Well, we are a band again. It doesn't feel like me and some side players or some session guys. Not that it felt like that with any of the previous lineups, but that was one of the fears that I had. I feel like Kiko [Loureiro] did us a really huge courtesy by helping us find Teemu because with Kiko needing to step down… I thought I was gonna finish my career out with Kiko, and when things came up with him, he couldn't tour anymore because he needed to be home for his kids. So I see he's touring again, which I'm happy that he's still playing. But he had to go home. And when he did, he introduced us to Teemu. And it was an even closer connection between me and Teemu than Kiko and I had. We'll [Kiko and I] always be friends, but this new relationship I have is — it harkens me back to the days when we had Marty Friedman in the band and the four of us actually felt like a band."
That's pretty high praise coming from Mustaine but the chemistry must be real since he's already thinking about working on a new record to follow up 2022's The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead! It would be the first 'Deth record to feature Mäntysaari.
"We're not gonna be taking as long in between offerings as we did this time. There were a lot of setbacks — the pandemic, the blockade, you name it. It's just so many things that went on. [My throat] cancer treatment, the lineup change, having to start from scratch with a new bassist. And the cancer treatment also was difficult on the guys because they were watching me go through all this stuff. And one day, I would be seemingly normal. The other day, I would be so medicated that I couldn't stay awake. And that was hard for the guys to see. I had two days that I was really, really sick that I threw up. Out of the whole treatment, I thought that was really good. I was fighting with everything, every moral fiber of my being, to make sure that I stayed in the game, because they kept saying over and over again, 'If you don't eat, if you lose weight, we're gonna put a tube in you.' And I got so serious. And we started to pick up the pace when we were doing the [The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead!] record."
