Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
You know exactly what you are going to be exposed to before the needle comes down gracefully upon the spinning vinyl, and yet the bolt of music you find your ears impaled upon is both satisfyingly and dynamically explosive. It is enough to register shock waves of pleasure and joy from across the oceans, it is seismic even after more than a decade and a half after it first appeared in cd form. It is the overwhelming arsenal poised at your heart, the warheads of metal ready to take off and bombarded the listener with strike after strike, the unrepentant wave of hits as A Night In Buenos Aires becomes the theatre of music that is so richly needed in a period of human inactivity.
If the build up to the Megadeth aggression seems to be extravagant, perhaps even excessive, then perhaps you have been listening to the wrong band for 40 years; for as the torpedo of music leaves no doubt of its intention, then modesty be damned, this is Dave Mustaine and co on the type of form that is both memorable and striking.
Originally released in 2007 on C.D., Megadeth’s soul is captured on vinyl posterity as the sound of Argentinian hearts are felt to be provoked, encouraged, and finally allowed to burst as A Night In Buenos Aires is released and given the fuller sound, the order of a general in an arena full of hope and a battering ram of admired and much loved songs.
As one of the ‘Big Four’ of Thrash Metal, Megadeth understand that what counts is the crowd, and unlike many of the groups that have dominated since the turn of the 80s and the natural progression away from the days NWOBHM, there is no filler, no musical grout in which to pad out the experience; even on vinyl this is a packed show, an arsenal that only the band can control.
To replace one form of ownership with another is often a large ask for any community to bear, but in a period when downloads and streaming have become the habit of many, to sit down and feel, indeed experience the warmth, the uncorked heat of a vinyl pressing all the way through is to be savoured, to be experienced as a memory: and even as tracks such as Set The World Afire, Skin o’ My Teeth, In My Darkest Hour, Reckoning Day, A Tout Le Monde, Tornado Of Souls, Symphony Of Destruction, Peace Sells, and Holy Wars…The Punishment Due, as well as sweet vocal rendition of Coming Home for the crowd, A Night In Buenos Aires becomes family.
In a time of underlying social pressures and ramped up exclusion, to find a place where you can still find a voice you love, that the music, the lyrics still stir a pulse under the skin, is to understand that in a large crowd or by yourself with the headphones on, there is no finer way to feel included.
Megadeth’s A Night In Buenos Aires is out now.
Ian D. Hall