MEGADETH leader Dave Mustaine has issued the following message:

"Droogies!

Today was an early day for me; I was up before the sun (and not because I didn’t go to sleep), and I hear a noise in the front room of my home, again it is 4:30 AM. Electra and her friends that stayed over (Electra had a party for her high scores in school) and they couldn’t possibly be up at that hour of the morning. I mean they may be young, but they are still girls and like to sleep. But there they were, all of them had woken up and were trying to monkey around with the games and entertainment stuff. All I know is I heard a clunk and I thought, I am going to look like Hugh Hefner (or Yngwie) in some robe with a shotgun (and no, I don’t have a gun) on the morning news, after I kill whatever is in my house at 4:30 AM.

I would have given someone’s eye teeth for a 12 gauge ”silly string” shotgun at the exact second I saw it was the pre-teen slumber party dwarves! Boy, that’ll get your blood flowing. Whatev! Life is flying by!

The last five weeks of our nine week break went by in a blast of driving back and forth, with all our family’s in tow, and for meetings with/for the band and just taking some solitary vacation time to recharge the batteries. And the rest of our time home is going to be nuts for me with getting revved up to go, but I am going to make the best of it, and we are having so much time together with Electra, Justis, and Pam that I know I will have a great end of summer with you all.

The next two weeks are busy!

There is the video for 'Never Walk Alone' that is going to be shot at the end of this month [more later] and its terrific storyline. I am more excited about this video shoot coming up than I have been since shooting 'Holy Wars' and 'Hangar 18'.

We decided on two new songs to add to the set; one (from Countdown To Extinction – in honor of one of my best friends) is 'Ashes In Your Mouth' and the other, from Killing Is My Business, etc., is 'The Skull Beneath The Skin'. This should please a lot of old school enthusiasts. Or just old people in general.

On the release front, That One Night has been certified Gold in the USA and I want to thank every one of you that bought this DVD. It’s also cool to see other countries try for a few bars the “aguante Megadeth” line. I heard the CD with the bonus tracks on it for “TON” and it brought back great memories of that special evening. Man, I get to relive it every time I hear that record!

Our box-set, Warchest, is coming out later this year and there will be a formal announcement of all the details as we get closer, but I am sure this is a great study of what my band set out to be, Sure some time s the performances were off, but there was a vibe, and an attitude that you could touch in the air it was so thick. There is also a DVD of a very rare performance from the RIP era line-up.

We are starting to talk to our endorsers about our appearances for NAMM this year, so stay tuned and we will let you know about that. I believe that me and the Drover boys are supposed to make a couple of visits to our endorser’s distributors while on this next leg. And since we aren’t going to be able to make it to all of the stores, the good folks at Dean and our dealers are going to work that out for themselves. We would love to show you some Megadeth stuff and why we play Dean and Shawn play Ddrums (cuz he can’t spell and neither can they!)

So, here is the scoop on the Pac Rim; we have been approached and are furiously negotiating, routing, budgeting, and trying to book our Asian tour from November 21st – December 2nd to Surabaya, Indonesia; Downtown East, Singapore; Taipei, Taiwan; Bangalore, India, Bangkok, Thailand, Beijing and Shanghai, China. We are also doing Japan as you know (a favorite of the Drovers), and are trying to close South Korea this trip too. This will be officially announced and confirmed here.

Now Australia is going to rock, and I know who the other bands are that are on Gigantour 2007OZ and I am pumped to not only see them all, but maybe even play a song or two with them, or they with us. I also get to keep my promise about showing the Drovers how big Australia really is now. Speaking of Gigantour, I talked to management about Gigantour 2008 and the line-up of bands we are considering are pretty stylish metal bands. I'm so glad not to have to deal with the politics of uncool lineups for tours like back in the old days. You either hooked up with a band(s) you totally gelled with, or not and the tour dragged on.

Michael Sarna has started work on the Gigantour DVD project while I am resting in San Diego, and we will have a tentative announcement this week on our status and what and where we are in the process, which songs by which bands will be included, etc. We also need to wrap up the edit on The Making Of United Abominations. I am sure to have a lot of stuff to keep me busy through the holidays, but the most important thing is that I am one day away from starting going through all of my riff and files and tapes again from the last tour, and from before in my Pro-Tools rig.

I am going to watch Blazing Saddles with my family and have a good laugh.

Love and Bruises, Dave Mustaine."

In other Megadeth news, the above mentioned Gigantour 2007 Australia dates will also include performances from STATIC-X, DEVILDRIVER and LACUNA COIL.

Dates scheduled currently include:

November

10 - Perth, Australia at Metro City
12 - Adelaide, Australia at Thebarton Theatre
13 - Melbourne, Australia at Festival Hall
15 - Sydney, Australia at Luna Park Big Top
18 - Brisbane, Australia at Riverstage

More details to follow

(thanks: DUG)