David Ellefson says Megadeth’s music is the “most timeless” of all the big thrash bands
David Ellefson says Megadeth‘s music is the “most timeless” of all the big thrash bands.
In a new interview with Fox Rochester [via Blabbermouth], Ellefson – who served in the heavy metal outfit from 1983 until 2002, and then again from 2010 to 2021 – praises his former band for reaching audiences beyond listeners of the thrash genre itself.
“There was a benchmark we had when we started Megadeth, to write very epic-oriented music, stuff that could really be a soundtrack. And also stuff that was timeless. I think the music has really stood the test of time,” he says. “It doesn’t sound dated.”
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“I think the Megadeth music, out of everybody in the thrash genre, I will go on record as saying, I think is probably the most timeless and will probably stand the test of time the most and be the most listened to by people that aren’t even just metalheads,” he goes on.
Ellefson adds that the band are not given enough credit for their “melodic” sound, adding: “It’s heavy, but it’s melodic. It’s listenable.
“So I think that’s jus the nature of rock and roll. The young generations are always the creators and they’re always pushing the envelope a little farther.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Ellefson notes how heavy metal became heavier after Megadeth with bands like Slipknot and Mudvayne.
“I remember when we were on tour with Ronnie James Dio, who is an icon – this was 1988 – talking with him one day on tour about how the next generation comes up. And our thrash metal was really heavy compared to what he was doing,” he continues.
“Then the masked bands come out – Slipknot, Mudvayne and all this stuff – so it gets heavier and heavier. Look, rock and roll has always been about pushing the limits, starting with Elvis [Presley]. That’s just the nature of what it’s supposed to be.”
Ellefson uses Kiss as an example of how thrash and heavy forms of metal from the 1970s and 1980s had become “family entertainment” by the 1990s. The change was clear, he says, because bands had “progressed” past what “our parents didn’t want us to listen to”.
He says: “I remember seeing the Kiss reunion in 1996. Me and [then-Megadeth guitarist] Marty Friedman went down, and I was looking at us going, as heavy and dark and daunting as this was, and our parents didn’t want us to listen to it, it was like family entertainment by then because of what had progressed past it.”
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