"We're on stage and some kid throws a coin, those English pounds were pretty thick... I came back out and said 'Give Ireland back to the Irish, anarchy in the UK'... The next day we arrive in Notthingham in England and i start working on 'Holy Wars' that day so the day after the incident happened we get this great song..." This is what Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine said in regards to the song "Holy wars... the punishment", the opening track for their 1990 studio album Rust in Peace, which is often regarded as one of the greatest thrash albums of all time, next to Metallica's Master of Puppets, Slayer's Reign in blood and Anthrax's Among the Living. But does the whole album hold up? Well, time to find out!
The album title came to Mustaine while driving home. He saw a bumper sticker on the car infront of him, which said "May your nuclear weapons rust in peace". The last 3 words stuck and became the album title. The album artwork was done by Ed Repka, who could be considered a legend amongs cover artists, as he did art for bands such as Death, Massacre and Possessed. It features the bands now iconic mascot, Vic Rattlehead, in a dark hangar (18) standing over a frozen alien with the worlds top leaders at the time behind him. The album was released through Capitol Records on september 24th
The album is a comfortable 40 minutes in lenght and features 9 songs (10 on the Korean edition), many of which could be considered the greatest in the genre. My personal favorites were the obvious Tornado of Souls and Five Magics. The lyrics cover many topics, such as politics, UFO conspiracies, religon and personal struggles.
The guitar work on this album is, simply, amazing. Dave Mustaine and Marty Friedman absolutely shred it on all tracks, and the riffs are very technical withouth losing the enjoyability. Many guitarists use it as inspiration for thier own songs, which is understandable when listening to it. When talking about this album you have to mention the solo on Tornado of souls, which always finds its way on top 10 lists and has enough metal in it to rebuild the twin towers. Friedman said this about the solo: "When I finished the solo to this one, Mustaine came into the studio, listened to it down once, turned around and without saying a word, shook my hand. It was at that moment that I felt like I was truly the guitarist for this band". Nick Menza is also incredible on the drums, whose performance is fast and gut punching. David Ellefson's bass isnt as noticable as the other instruments and is often lost in the mix, but when its heard its pleasent and goes well with the drums. All of the members, except for Friedman, give backing vocals which are nice to hear. Speaking of vocals, its been a loooong standing joke that Mustaines vocals suck (watch him becum a gaaaawd), but i think theres thrash bands with harder vocals to get into (Kreator for example), so these arent too bad. He delivers many lines quickly and is always back to back with the instrumentals. There are also some tracks where theres deep, monster vocals, but its not like death metal or anything.
The production is always clean. It's much higher quality than most bands from this era. Theres not much to say about it other than i thought every instrument had it's time to shine.
Rust in Peace continues to have its place amongst the most influental, greatest and most iconic metal albums of all time, and i totally agree with these takes! If you wanna get into thrash this is most definetly one of the best albums to start with. And if you're alredy a metal fan but haven't heard this one? Well what are you waiting for?!
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