Megadeth – Super Collider

Review by Jason Guest

Megadeth aren’t what they used to be. The nothing-to-lose-and-everything-to-slay days of the 80s are long gone. The more, shall we say, “commercially viable” Megadeth of the 90s died a death with the dire duo of Cryptic Writings and Risk. The 00s may not have started off well but from The System Has Failed right up to 2011’s Th1rt3en saw Mustaine’s mob on the up, releasing material that was darker and had a bit more bite than had been heard for a while. With album number fourteen, Super Collider, Megadeth are about as far from where they began as they could possibly be and have brought unto us – wait for it – a fairly mediocre hard rock album no less.

With Mustaine’s snarling vocal delivery and the track’s fervent pace, ‘Kingmaker’ starts the album off pretty well but the pedestrian title track and ‘Burn!’ (with its utterly pointless Van Halen-like shredding intro) do more harm than good. So far, so not-so-good. All does not bode well. ‘Built For War’ almost picks the album up but by now, it’s apparent that there’s something missing; maybe it’s somewhere behind the track’s wo-oh-oh-ooh-oh’s (yes, really). As for ‘Off The Edge’, Mustaine may well be snarling that he’s “going crazy, this world’s gone crazy, I’m falling off the edge”, but nobody sounds crazy, upset, or even the slightest bit confused. Nope, Megadeth are happy to sit at a safe distance from the edge thank you very much. That is until the last minute of ‘Dance In The Rain’ when an all-too-brief glimpse of the Megadeth of the 80s rears its ugly Rattlehead with an intense flash of thrash. And so with the rest of the album being pretty much mid-tempo jaunts through Mustaine and co.’s diluted rage, Super Collider is an album that will have you nodding – definitely not headbanging – along while you do something else. The banjo of the bluegrass-influenced ‘The Blackest Crow’ might turn your head away from whatever it was that you were doing, as might the ‘Little Wing’-esque intro to ‘Don’t Turn Your Back’ or even the cover of Thin Lizzy’s ‘Cold Sweat’.

The trouble with Super Collider is that it’s not an album that you’ll put in the CD player, press play, and crank the volume so high that inhabitants of some neighbouring planet will be bashing down your door demanding that you turn it down. Nope. It’s that album that you can put on in the company of anybody – friends, family, the PMRC – and nobody will mind. But neither will they be overly impressed. And neither will anyone say, “You gotta put that on again!” It’s not a bad album, but who the hell wants an album of mid-tempo, uninspiring tracks featuring Dave Mustaine as guest vocalist that any and all can tolerate ? Do you see how Vic Rattlehead’s image is but a faint reflection on the album cover? (You might have to squint)  That’s the spirit of Megadeth fading before our very eyes. Bring back the jazz-laced raging thrash; bring back the loud-mouthed nutjob that snarls like a rabid dog; bring back the venom and the vitriol. Whatever you do, just don’t ask us to mellow with Megadeth.

5 out of 10

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Track listing:

1. Kingmaker
2. Supercollider
3. Burn!
4. Built For War
5. Off The Edge
6. Dance In The Rain
7. Beginning Of Sorrow
8. The Blackest Crow
9. Forget To Remember
10. Don’t Turn Your Back…
11. Cold Sweat