Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

Thirty years after Dave Mustaine was sacked by Metallica, it seems as if the crown prince of Thrash can finally look back on the intervening years and sit back and think to himself that somewhere along the line, he triumphed. Not that there was ever a final goal of that kind lurking between two of the big four of American Thrash Metal but the grip satisfaction that since 1992 Megadeth have had nine top-20 U.S. albums on the bounce must keep him going and if there is any legitimacy and heart in the American market, as well as here in the U.K., then Super Collider will make it the seemingly impossible 10.

For the first time since Cryptic Writings in 1997, the line-up is unchanged from album to album and this benefits the overall feel of the finished article, it is more natural, less hampered perhaps by expectation and a burden to prove that only constant adjustment and revolution brings out the best in Dave Mustaine. This is a big thing, it gives the fan the chance to really get to grips with being able to compare and contrast two recent releases side by side for any type of repetition. Yes it is Thrash Metal but there really are differences in ever album but thankfully Super Collider, whilst not spinning at maximum velocity, gives the impression of hurtling round at a million miles an hour, not to prove the existence of the so called God Particle but to show that after four decades in the business there really should be no doubt that Megadeth deserve their place in the Big Four but to be honest are probably the most exciting and consistently terrific.

Nowhere is the change more remarkable than on the song The Blackest Crow, full of trepidation, a narrative that Edgar Allen Poe would have been proud to pen and scare his faithful readers, the guitar plays if possessed by a rampant spirit high on life but with the sense of mischief woven throughout its very being. With songs such as Built For War, Dance in the Rain, the haunting lyrics of Forget to Remember and Off The Edge thrown in to the Metal Monster’s mix there is nothing to dislike with any sort of passion at all. It is Megadeth, it is Dave Mustaine, David Elfson, Shawn Drover and Chris Broderick, it is what it says on the tin, just superb and still splitting thrash like atoms.

Ian D. Hall