Megadeth “Megadeth” Album Review by Cael McLeish

Jan 23, 2026

Megadeth have had an amazing career as a pioneer of thrash metal, securing their spot as one of the Big 4 alongside Anthrax, Slayer, and Metallica. For 40 years, Dave Mustaine and his cohort have made great music, sold over 50 million records worldwide, won a Grammy in 2017, and have played over 2,500 shows in over 50 countries.

Sadly, in August of 2025, the band announced that their 2026 album would be their seventeenth and their final album. After numerous health scares and the recent loss of Ozzy Osbourne, Dave Mustaine decided that it was time to ride into the sunset to enjoy retired life with his family. This announcement was met with great sadness but acceptance from fans.

It also helped to increase the hype for the next album, the self-titled Megadeth.

The first single from the album was the opening track, Tipping Point, which was released back in October. I felt this was a decent track at the time, though nothing overly special. This song always felt like it was a fair continuation from where The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead! had left off, especially songs like We’ll Be Back. With lyrics like “Today I bleed, but tonight you will die” and “You won’t define me, you’ll never find me, I’m at my tipping point,” I was certainly much more invested in the music than the lyrical content. Teemu Mäntysaari and Dirk Verbeuren do pack a hell of a punch though, and will continue to throughout the full run of the album.

With I Don’t Care, released as the second single in November, Mustaine tried to go back to a very punk sound. For me, this song felt rather lopsided where the instrumental certainly took a much higher quality than the lyrics, which felt like Dave trying to go back to the edge he had on Peace Sells, but without the conviction behind it. James LoMenzo’s bass is probably at its most noticeable here, providing a tight rhythm with a punchy tone.

The third track, Hey God?!, was one of my unexpected highlights. Here, Mustaine takes on the role of someone a little lost in life talking to God, mentioning that he feels distance but knowing it was him that moved, and ultimately saying, “I thought that we’d have more to say, just let me know if you’re there somehow.” Having seen the Behind the Maskdocumentary, Mustaine recalled that this was inspired by one of those Hallmark-esque religious posters, and he felt he wanted to write a song that let the metal community know that “it’s ok to believe in God, and it’s ok if you don’t.”

Let There Be Shred has one of the strongest riffs of the album in my opinion, calling to mind the sounds of something like 1,320 from Endgame. Lyrically, this paints the picture of playing guitar during a metal show, talking about “clawing away fretboards” and “amps start to roar, a tsunami of sound.” I will say that I feel they’ve done this song better with Back in the Day on The System Has Failed, and ultimately, this makes me think of a weaker version of Metallica’s Whiplash.

Puppet Parade is another case of Megadeth reusing their own riff, with Almost Honest coming to mind very clearly within the opening bars. However, it’s one of the finer songs on this album. Lyrically, I think it’s the best, masterfully comparing a monotonous life that’s lost its edge along the way to feeling like a puppet on a string. While I felt that the chorus was a little generic, I did love the back half where the song takes a half-time feel. This song contains some of the best musical moments across the whole album for me.

Another Bad Day is one that I felt was rather bland. This is a killer riff that’s stifled by an unimaginative song structure and very generic lyrics like “My phone is dead and the rent is due / I lost my job and I lost a tooth.” Teemu’s solo is impressive, but it doesn’t help the song shine any better. This is a song that I could easily mark as filler and dismiss.

Made to Kill opens with a very cool drum intro from Verbeuren into one of the fiercest riffs of the album. While the lyrics are your typical Megadeth war song, instrumentally, this is one of the best songs overall. The structure and pacing overall take me back to classic Megadeth, and I find myself having a good time with this one. While this would have been a weaker track on Dystopia, here, it’s a standout.

Obey the Call has one of the best intros on the album by a long shot which turns into a pretty decent song. This is a bit more of a spoken-word style for Dave within the verses, but I feel like it works here. There’s enough happening behind the vocal to make this stay interesting. I feel like this is one of the more intriguing choruses for me. In the last minute and twenty or so, the song changes gears completely into a thrashing climax that I absolutely love. This is one of my big highlights for the album, even if I wish Dave had come up with a proper melody for the verses.

I Am War is one of my least favorite Megadeth songs. This is Dave writing about Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, but trying to condense it like this simply didn’t work out overly well. There is no apparent structure to the lyrics, and I feel like forcing a summation of masterful writing into a short lyric really did not work. There just isn’t enough interesting happening throughout the riffs to make this one work for me. I know music is subjective, but this is a hard skip for me in future listens.

And that brings us to the final original Megadeth song, The Last Note. It opens with a spoken passage over a clean guitar before turning into a mid-tempo rocker. This one really didn’t do much for me, which is not quite the ending I hoped for. Lyrically, this is fairly sound, though there are certainly some cringey elements here to my ear. I do love the use of an acoustic solo here, which reminds me a lot of How The Story Ends from Endgame, but ultimately for a final song, I had hoped for more. Compare this to songs like Dear Father from Black Sabbath’s 13, or even The Garden by Rush, where these bands threw pretty much everything they had at the song and gave it a sense of finality. Even Karnivool’s Salva feels like a better “goodbye,” where The Last Note actually feels just a little forced to me.

The bonus cover here is one that garnered a lot of attention in the buildup. Dave Mustaine ends his career with a Metallica song, which he maintains is not a cover because he had a hand in writing it before his departure from Metallica. I actually really like this cover, though it does feel just a little ‘uncanny valley’ for my taste. Hearing Davespitting out Hetfield’s lyrics is certainly an odd experience. Still, they do an admirable job with the material, especially the iconic solo section where Mustaine and Mäntysaari do an excellent job of adding their own identity into Kirk Hammett’s best solo. Dirk gets a moment to shine in the song’s closing moments, infusing a drum solo into the closing vamp.

And that’s Megadeth’s final album. While it’s still ahead of albums like Super Collider and Risk, it certainly doesn’t reach the upper echelons of my Megadeth rankings. I feel like this is an album that almost makes it ok to let go of the band as they reach their finale. How much of the album will be played live remains to be seen, but I think the band will likely pull from the front half of the record more than the back when choosing their setlists. I would still recommend seeing the band live, as I feel a lot of these songs will take on a bigger presence live than they have on the record.

Rating 6.5/10