Rust In Peace Live

To celebrate the 20-year anniversary of Megadeth’s epic metal bar-setter *Rust In Peace*, Dave Mustaine and company hit the road in March of 2010 to play the album in its entirety. These 16 tracks were recorded on the last night of the tour at the Palladium in Hollywood (mere blocks away from where the band first formed in 1983). True fans will rejoice in the return of Dave Ellefson on bass. From the opening of “Holy Wars…The Punishment Due” it’s obvious that the chemistry between band members is still surging. Airtight leads are executed with athletic precision and Mustaine’s voice sounds like it hasn’t aged a day. “Hangar 18” sounds so monolithic and heavy that you also get a real sense of how well this show was recorded – at times everything sounds so live and upfront (especially on the solos) that it feels like you’ve been transported to the front of the stage. Nick Menza’s drums fire like artillery on the album’s closer “Rust In Peace…Polaris” before the band bestows extra fan favorites like “Peace Sells,” “Trust” and “She-Wolf.”

Although the 1990s may be thought of by many as the decade that thrash metal took a back seat to other hard rocking styles (grunge, nu metal, the oh-so-pleasant rap-metal, etc.), early in the decade all of thrash's founding fathers -- Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, and Anthrax -- issued classic albums.