Tim Brouk at JConline.com recently caught up with MEGADETH bassist David Ellefson. An excerpt from the story is available below:

It's been a busy year so far for Ellefson, guitarist Chris Broderick, drummer Shawn Drover and frontman Dave Mustaine. Playing with the Big Four and sharing the stage with numerous bands both young and established on the Mayhem Fest have given the veteran thrash metal band quite the variety of sets and audiences.

"One night we may play a 50-minute set, other times we're contracted for an hour, other times it's 75 minutes or an hour and a half if we're doing headlining shows," Ellefson said. "There's a lot of flexibility and what's fun about that is having such a wide variety and wide selection. ... There's a lot of songs that have become the staples for us, our material through the '90s and all the way back. We have fans asking for stuff off the first record. We have such a broad catalog. We look at who we are playing to. If it's Big Four, we can play the stadium material and slower grooves like 'Symphony of Destruction' or blow out things like 'Hook in Mouth,' which is good old-school thrash metal. Playing something like Mayhem, it may be a younger audience or people who are more in tune to radio metal. ... We can dip into our catalog and play the right songs for the fans that are there."

Like the festival name suggests, Megadeth was one of the "big four" thrash metal bands that got its start in the early 1980s. Mustaine formed the band soon after leaving Metallica and has cranked out gold and platinum albums Peace Sells ... But Who's Buying" (1986), Rust in Peace (1990) and Countdown to Extinction (1992). Peace Sells ... helped propel the band into heavy metal stardom. The title track features a famous bass intro from Ellefson that went on to be an intro for MTV news promos for years.

"You never know when a lick or a riff is going to cast the die for the rest of your career," he laughed. "You're lucky when it happens to you. We knew when we wrote that song and when we took it out on tour, we knew that song was going to be a hit. It just felt like it. There's some things you can feel and that was one of them. In some degree if there was a theme song for Megadeth, it's one of those songs that has stood the test of time. It's superseded generations and it superseded even the genre of thrash metal. In a lot of ways, it's the perfect song."

Click here for the complete article.

Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine recently told Artisan News he was so busy completing the band' new album, TH1RT3EN, that now that he's done he doesn't know what to do with himself. He also questions the album's November 1st release date. Check out the video report below:

TH1RT3EN was recorded at the band's own recording facility - Vic's Garage studio - in San Marcos, California with producer Johnny K (DISTURBED, 3 DOORS DOWN, FINGER ELEVEN).

At a one-off gig from the European Big 4 shows, (July 4th) Megadeth debuted their new track, 'Public Enemy No.1', live in Hamburg, Germany at the Docks. Watch fan-filmed footage of the new track below: