Mike Bax at Toronto-based Lithium Magazine recently caught up with MEGADETH bassist David Ellefson. An excerpt from the interview is available below:

Bax: From a technical standpoint, this is most obvious on The Big 4 Bulgaria Blu-ray. All of the performances are wonderful to watch, but the Megadeth performance captured on that Blu-ray is flawless, Dave. It’s a real showpiece for the band, I'm sure.

Dave: "(Laughs) I appreciate that, thanks. I mean, that’s one of the things that I notice coming back to Megadeth. There was an incredible work ethic from the band right through to the crews. Everybody was really into it. Chris Broderick plays his guitar for eight hours, and THEN he goes and lives his life. That’s how he is every single day (laughs). It’s amazing; that’s why he’s such a fantastic guitar player. We would sometimes run through the entire set backstage before we would go onstage to play it for an audience. Our approach was like a marathon runner… if you are required to run ten miles, then you had better be able to run twelve. You need the extra gas in the tank to be able to run that ten miles efficiently."

Bax: That makes sense. How are Shawn and Chris to write with? This will be your first studio work with them both, correct?

Dave: "It’s really been good, actually. It’s a much different process than I’ve ever done before with Megadeth, but it’s a collaborative environment I’ve done with other bands, so I am certainly comfortable with it. It’s really gone well, honestly. Johnny K is a fantastic producer – I’m really happy we were able to get him involved. He and Dave seem to have a good working relationship. Kind of like we came off of Rust In Peace and went right into Countdown To Extinction, that’s kind of how I feel about the new album. We came off the Rust In Peace 20th Anniversary and went right into what could theoretically be our next Countdown to Extinction, just twenty years later."

Bax: One of the things I think Megadeth has always been able to boast is a technical proficiency few other bands can touch. I'm sure most musicians would trip over some of the bars of music in Megadeth material. It must be challenging to reproduce some Megadeth material live on stage.

Dave: "Yeah, it is. It’s interesting because I grew up playing like that. I met Dave as he was first composing, and some of that stuff at first was some really slow and heavy riffs. Then the material got sped up very quickly and we seemed to start writing more and more progressively from there. I had a moment early on there where I was really glad I’d learned to play bass the way that I did, you know? Even in our original line-up with Gar Samuelson and Chris Poland, they originally came from a jazz-fusion-rock background kind of a MAHAVISHNU ORCHESTRAmeets THE WHO sound… they were a little bit older than me and Dave, and they had some different life experiences behind them coming into the band. But when you fused me and Dave, the metal guys, with those two guys… we had a completely unique sound.

It was interesting because everyone around us had this much heavier (pauses) ‘metal’ sound… like an eighties metal sound. Sometimes I would be kind of envious of it, too. I would hear ANTHRAX records and they would have these great drum tones and these thick guitars, and obviously METALLICA records. Metallica records would always have great drum tone with a lot of bottom end and slick guitar tones. It took us several records to completely haul our tone in. We played our stuff differently than the other guys, you know? Out of The Big Four, every one of us has a very unique sound, and I think that’s so cool about what we are doing as The Big Four on tour now – we have such a unique individuality - each one of our styles, the way we write music and the way we play. These things are likely all elements we struggled with in the early days, trying to hone our sound, and it really became the basis of our individuality."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

A snippet of the new Megadeth song, 'Never Dead', is featured in the trailer below for the new NeverDead fantasy action game: