Professor Reggie Almeida of the Renzo Gracie TN Brazilian jiu-jitsu school in Tennessee, who has been traveling with MEGADETH on the band’s recent tours, has uploaded backstage and performance video of the Dave Mustaine-fronted outfit’s June 28, 2025 concert at the Tons Of Rock festival in Oslo, Norway. Check out the clip below.
MEGADETH is currently putting the finishing touches on its seventeenth studio album. The LP will be released via frontman Dave Mustaine‘s Tradecraft imprint with the Frontiers Label Group‘s new imprint BLKIIBLK.
MEGADETH is once again working with Chris Rakestraw, a producer, mixer and engineer who previously worked on MEGADETH‘s last two albums, 2022’s “The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead!” and 2016’s “Dystopia”.
MEGADETH guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari joined the band two years ago. Mäntysaari stepped in as the replacement for Brazilian-born guitarist Kiko Loureiro, who announced in September 2023 that he would sit out the next leg of MEGADETH‘s “Crush The World” tour in order to stay home with his children back in Finland. It was later revealed that the now-38-year-old Finnish musician would continue to play guitar for MEGADETH for the foreseeable future, with Loureiro seemingly having no plans to return.
Mäntysaari was born in Tampere, Finland and began playing guitar at the age of 12. In 2004, he joined the band WINTERSUN. He has also been a member of SMACKBOUND since 2015.
Released in September 2022, MEGADETH‘s latest album, “The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead!”, sold 48,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in its first week of release to land at position No. 3 on the Billboard 200 chart. It marked MEGADETH‘s eighth top 10-charting album.
MEGADETH‘s previous top 10 entries on the Billboard 200 were “Countdown To Extinction” (No. 2, 1992),“Youthanasia” (No. 4, 1994),“Cryptic Writings” (No. 10, 1997),“United Abominations” (No. 8, 2007),“Endgame” (No. 9, 2009),“Super Collider” (No. 6, 2013) and “Dystopia” (No. 3, 2016).
Led by the growled vocals and razor-wire riffing of Mustaine, MEGADETH are one of the “Big Four” thrash titans. Shortly after being kicked out of METALLICA in 1983, Mustaine met bassist David Ellefson, and the pair bonded quickly, forming the core of MEGADETH. Drummer Gar Samuelson and guitarist Chris Poland later joined, and MEGADETH released their underground-hit debut “Killing Is My Business… And Business Is Good!” in 1985. Its follow-up, “Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?”, solidified the band’s status with sprawling yet tightly wound songs like the uneasy opener “Wake Up Dead” and the fiery title track.
“So Far, So Good… So What!”, released in 1988, featured a new lineup as well as a thrashy cover of the SEX PISTOLS‘ “Anarchy In The U.K.” and the anti-PMRC broadside “Hook In Mouth”. In 1990 they released “Rust In Peace”, with Nick Menza on drums and technical wizard Marty Friedman on guitar; songs such as “Holy Wars… The Punishment Due” and “Hangar 18” blended pummeling riffs and suspicion-fueled lyrics with a stadium-rock ambition that matched the era’s metal-embracing tendencies.
“Countdown To Extinction”, released in 1992, and “Youthanasia”, released in 1994, continued the band’s dominance of metal and emergence in rock’s mainstream, with the latter album’s “À Tout Le Monde” being a rare thrash ballad. After a brief breakup in the early 2000s, MEGADETH returned as a de facto Mustaine solo project with 2004’s “The System Has Failed”. Ellefson rejoined in 2010 prior to the album “Th1rt3en” and remained in the MEGADETH lineup until 2021, when he was fired.
In addition to Mustaine, MEGADETH‘s current lineup includes drummer Dirk Verbeuren, bassist James LoMenzo and Mäntysaari.
