Megadeth have performed We’ll Be Back, the first single from their upcoming 16th album The Sick, The Dying… and The Dead!, live for the first time.
After opening their set on Wednesday night (August 24) at the FivePoint Amphitheatre in Irvine, California with Hangar 18 and Dread and the Fugitive Mind, the thrash metal heavyweights launched into We’ll Be Back to a rapturous response from the crowd. Watch the performance below.
Megadeth are currently embarking on a US tour supporting Las Vegas metallers Five Finger Death Punch.
Despite a string of shows following its June release, We’ll Be Back has only now been added to Megadeth’s live setlist. Night Stalkers and Soldier On! – two more singles that have been released since – are yet to be performed live.
Frontman Dave Mustaine explained the band’s process behind setlist planning in a recent interview with Milwaukee’s 102.9 The Hog radio station.
“We are adding two songs to our set; we are adding Night Stalkers and We’ll Be Back,” he said (transcribed by Blabbermouth). “Hopefully we’ll be able to add Soldier On! by then too. But a lot of that is dictated by the radio support and the listeners’ tastes. When certain songs our fans like to hear, we’ll add them into the setlist if we can.
“If there’s a song that we’re playing in the setlist and people aren’t responding to it, well, obviously we’re gonna do the opposite and take it out of the setlist. This is all part of the showbiz part. A lot of people don’t care about that; they just wanna rock.”
The Sick, The Dying… and The Dead! Will arrive next week on September 2.
Following longtime bassist David Ellefson’s departure from Megadeth last year, his bass parts for the album were scrapped and subsequently re-recorded by Testament bass player Steve Di Giorgio. The band’s former bassist James LoMenzo is currently playing with them on tour.
In an interview in the new issue of Guitar World, Dave Mustaine reflects on the departure of Megadeth’s former guitarist Marty Friedman with a sense of regret.
Friedman’s exit from the band came after tension over a guitar solo on their 1999 album, Risk. Essentially, their management didn’t feel the solo he had written for the record’s fifth track, Breadline, was right for the song.
“I said [to management], ‘Well, you have three choices. Either you mute the solo completely, have Marty come back and redo it, or I do it,’” Mustaine remembers. “And then I said, ‘If I do it, you’d better tell him.’ Well, I redid it and nobody told Marty.
“So we’re in there listening to the finished album and the solo comes on. It’s my solo, not Marty’s… I looked at him as tears ran down his face and I knew right away that nobody had told him. I knew that was probably going to be the end of Marty Friedman.”
He continues: “What happened to Marty was definitely not okay. Our management was supposed to tell him and, for whatever reason, they didn’t do it. I think that was a terrible thing to do to him.”
