Endgame

Okay I promise to ease up on the Dave Mustaine related posts. It is hard to keep away though - he's an easy target for jokes plus he has been in serious promoslag mode in the lead up to the release of the new album...

Speaking of which, Endgame leaked August 31st. These are our initial reactions:

M: Woah the first song is soooooo good!

J: yeah, music seems cool, only on track two atm :) vocals don't seem as punchy as UA, but hey, it's more fucking metal then Death Fagnetic!

M: completely and utterly :)

J: the solos are amazing!
megadeth should just make instrumental albums - dave's voice is sounding a bit rough round the edges... still, it's a musical delight

M: track 8 is a bit silly at the start. dave's voice is def getting a bit old.....nothing compared to james' blown out vocal straining tho. but ahhhh the guitars are so good

J: i'm up to 4 atm - i don't like 3, it sucks.
i love 4 and 1 :)

M: i thought 3 was okay. i'm up to track ten. 8 kinda goes weirdly STRAIGHT INTO 9 but once you get over it, it's a welcome change of pace. i think some of the songs could have been faster

J: 5's got some wicked music, but the vocals let it down. when it goes into the pre-chorus dave could have used vocals, but never, if he did, he could have sounded darker, but doesn't.
6 is a bit blah :/

M: 10 was a bit blah too, the last track (11) has a great solo tho. the solos on this album are wicked, really really good

The next day, J sent me his track-by-track opinions. It's shorter than many you'll read, but it's all you need to know.

J: 1 - awesome
2 - cool solo, vocals a bit shit
3 - sucks, dave mentions "pocket knife", you get more points for switchblade knife, huh :)
4 - cool - nice vocals
5 - cool music, vocals/structure could be a lot better
6 - sucks
7 - cool - sounds like it should have been on UA
8 - gets better from the intro, but doesn't really go anywhere
9 - cool, sounds like it should have been on RIP
10 - sounds like it should have been on Cryptic Writings. Shit, though works good as a penultimate track if it was better structured and a minute shorter. kill the second of classical guitar.
11 - cool final track , intro could have been better structured. sounds like the last track on UA i think, or thereabouts.

M: agreed, altho i think i like 8 and 3 more than you do :) i like the guitars at the start of 8 - not the stupid bit, i mean when the electric guitars come in, i think the rhythm and pitch is really cool. but yeah, it kinda trails off at the end which is a bit disappointing.
see what i mean about how nothing stands out from the others tho? when headcrusher comes in it's a bit woah like, but apart from that it's all kinda so so.....apart from the solos which rule. and the first track, which is a totally awesome start to an album, really fucking good. really really good, actually, i love that start. i listened to it at least 3 times on the train in today :D

J: some parts do stand out, mainly the solos, but i get really annoyed that dave has some cool vocal potential - i think it's track 5 - the guitars sound great, the lyrics not so, but when it enters the pre-chorus it had potential to sound wicked if dave used it as an opportunity to use vocals there.
There's too many bits that sound like they're gonna be wicked like how the Gears of War solo starts off to be, then you get heavily let down when it doesn't follow thru with some cool sounding shit.
i've always found it really hard to get into megadeth when i got into metal, never really liked their shit much, but it grew on me. i still say that UA is the best album they've done since RIP, this being the second, but it's spoiled by dave's vocals heavily. UA had a much better vocal structure than this one.

And that's all we have time for kids! I'll try and avoid megadave and his antics for the next few days...or not, fuck you, I'll post what I want to :)