Revisiting: Megadeth's Countdown to Extinction

 

Countdown to Extinction by Megadeth

Release Year: 1992

Last Time I Listened to It: It's been a couple of years. I listen to a lot of Megadeth but Peace Sells... But Who's Buying and Rust in Peace are my go-to's when I gotta hear me some Dave Mustaine goodness. I'll check out the occasional song from Countdown, but I don't think I've listened to the full album front to back in two or three years.

Countdown to Extinction isn't the first Megadeth album. It's not my favorite Megadeth album, but I'm pretty sure it IS the album that really made me fall in love with the band.

So let's hop in the Wayback Machine and trek back to the summer after I graduated from high school. That summer was predominately filled with two things: my friend and metal music. I spent the days taking my first semester of college classes and I spent as many of the nights as I could hanging with homies, cruising around town, annoying cowboys and being a general nuisance to the community. 

And the soundtrack to those nights was always some loud-ass, guitar-filled hard rock. Unless we were Ryan was driving and we were jamming to that Cheech & Chong tape we all dug so much.

My buddies weren't as into metal as I was and didn't care for the thrashier tunes I was coming to love back then. No way I was gonna get them to roll out to the sounds of Overkill or Testament. However, Metallica had put out The Black Album, streamlining their sound, moving in a more accessible direction and scoring major hits with stuff like Enter Sandman. In the wake of Metallica's massive mainstream success, many thrash bands took a cue from The Black Album and followed suit.

Countdown brought Megadeth increased success, though on a vastly smaller scale than Metallica. Symphony of Destruction broke out and suddenly people who didn't like metal were talking about how cool Megadeth was. Megadeth was the first record I could get my friends to listen to and because of that, it quickly became one of my favorite albums. 

Now, let's put the nostalgia aside and examine whether Countdown still holds up today. And you know what? Yeah. It holds up pretty damn well.

The album opens with Skin of My Teeth and right away, it's clear Countdown is a very different animal than the albums that preceded it. The complex song structures, tempo shifts and flat-out speed and intensity of past Megadeth releases are gone. In their place, Countdown relies on simple, catchy riffs, more conventional song structures and Mustaine's vocal performance. 

That stuff is all on display on Symphony of Destruction, perhaps the biggest Mega-hit of all time.  The song is a moody mid-tempo grind that rides along on a stop-start riff that anyone who's played guitar for two months can pull off. The song is really more about Mustaine's sneering contempt for politicians, which really comes across in his voice.

Elsewhere, Architecture of Aggression is probably the album's heaviest moment, its crunching riffs clobbering you over the head. Sweating Bullets is a wry, almost funny rendering of the war between all the voices in Mustaine's head. The Deth dudes almost go power ballad on Foreclosure of a Dream and the album closes with the on-two punch of Captive Honor and Ashes in Your Mouth.

The band is in fine form here. Mustaine gives a good enough vocal performance to pull off these songs, which is important because the goal was to sell more records and it's the singing that sells songs to most potential fans. He also kicks up some dust in his solo duels with Marty Friedman, who is out-of-his-mind brilliant on this record. Nick Menza and David Ellefson give the songs a propulsive, explosive bottom end, throwing in a few surprising twists and turns just for fun.

The Verdict: What's most remarkable to me is how consistent Countdown is for a record that radically alters a band's sound. There aren't really any bad tracks on this platter and the songwriting is as good as you're gonna find anywhere in mainstream metal at the time. The lyrical content is pretty stellar and tackles everything from war to economic devastation to problems in the U.S. prison system. Comparing it to The Black Album, I have to say Countdown is the better listen. Black has a couple of clunkers on it (Wherever I May Roam, My Friend of Misery) and Countdown doesn't have any sappy love songs on it. Admit it, Nothing Else Matters is fucking romantic drivel. 

So Countdown to Extinction probably isn't in my Top 5 Megadeth records. It lacks the intensity and pure shredding fury I love so much about albums like Rust in Peace and Peaces Sells... But Who's Buying. But it's got a lot of solid songwriting, killer playing from Nick Menza and Marty Friedman and tunes that are fun to sing along to. Put this on in your car, crank the volume, and go for a drive. You won't be sorry. 

Best Songs: Architecture of Aggression, Sweating Bullets, High Speed Dirt, Ashes in Your Mouth