Two of The Big 4 together. Megadeth bassist David Ellefson and Anthrax bassist Frank Bello join forces as Altitudes & Attitude, with their debut full-length album Get It Out set to drop on January 18th via Megaforce Records. However, Get It Out sounds nothing like thrash metal, in fact it’s closer to melodic rock; a rather ironic fact. “It is ironic,” concurs Ellefson, speaking exclusively to BraveWords scribe Aaron Small.

“I think if we did it as thrash metal, it would be an entirely different story; one that I don’t think would be as cool, quite honestly. It’s funny, at one point we (Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, Anthrax) were all competitors in The Big 4. Then by the time we finally did The Big 4 in 2010 / 2011, we suddenly really became brothers in arms. We had fought the same battles, we had won the same war. That was a great way to sort of plant our flag once and for all as a genre, with the four bands and our fans. That’s where this started. That’s when Frank and I were out doing our bass clinics together. That’s when I leaned over to Frank one night in London and said, ‘Why don’t you and me write some backing tracks we can play to? I think we could really expand this clinic thing.’ I wasn’t thinking as broad even as this Altitudes & Attitude record or performing shows; I wasn’t thinking that big. I was just thinking, let’s get some backing tracks behind us. It’s the beauty of life when things take this fork in the road and go down an avenue you never even saw coming.”

Back in 2014, Altitudes & Attitude released a self-titled three song EP; that was five years ago. Obviously, Megadeth and Anthrax keep both Ellefson and Bello very busy, but that’s dedication, to continually plug away at a side project for so long. “Oh, man! We would find every little window to get together out in LA at (producer) Jay Ruston’s place,” recalls David. “We’d walk in with two, maybe three songs and sit there for an afternoon, finalizing arrangements and putting down scratch tracks. Then the next day, we’d go into a big drum room with Jeff Fridel, who now is in all of Maynard’s bands not called Tool. We would cut the drums, then the following day, we’d go back to Jay’s and start laying down the real keeper guitar and bass parts, and Frank would sing. So, every session was about three or four days; that requires almost a week off somewhere in our schedule. I’m closer to LA, being in the Phoenix area. But Frank had to fly out from New York, then take a red-eye home.”

“Sometimes Frank would bring in songs that were completed, and I enjoyed those because then I got to sit down and play bass to his songs, which I really, really like. I got to play in a whole different way… I put on my 1980 Joe Jackson hat. Joe had this incredible bass player; I remember seeing him on Saturday morning TV when I was a kid. He was so good! He was melodic, he played this Fender P bass… he was very aggressive, he was a pick player. That’s largely the kind of vibe I went for when I played bass, especially on Frank’s songs. My songs are a little more riff-oriented, so I went a little more traditional in the hard rock / metal sense. But with Frank’s songs, I could really step out of my role as a metal bass player and go to a whole different place.”

The self-titled three-song EP from 2014 has been remixed / remastered and tacked onto the end of Get It Out, with these new versions of “Booze And Cigarettes”, “Tell The World”, and “Here Again” sounding a little punchier and brighter compared to the originals. “Yeah, for sure,” agrees Ellefson. “Once we had this new batch of tunes… Jay’s such a great producer, and he’s a bass player; a lefty bass player. When we first talked about this five or six years ago and started laying these tracks down, Frank said, ‘Jay’s the guy. He’s a bass player, he gets it.’ And he was right, Jay’s been the perfect fit; he’s our fifth Beatle if you will. But the templates and tones were pretty much the same throughout. Once Jay mixed the new tracks top to bottom, there was a little more punch. So, we decided to go back and bring the other ones up to where these are. Those other three songs already have a life of their own; there’s YouTube videos and audio of them. We wanted to preserve that and not take those down. Especially ‘Tell The World’, it actually has a music video to it that Frank and I shot back in New York. If this is the only A&A record that you know of right now, because you’re not aware of the past, cause it was quite a while ago… then let’s put it all into one disc. At least the fan can get it all in one place. We thought, this is the time. We spent so much time working on this, and it’s taken so long to do it, let’s not hold things back. Let’s really give everybody all we got on this one.”

The Get It Out album cover looks like a picture frame with shattered glass, yet there’s more than one photo in there. There’s multiple images of both David and Frank’s faces with different expressions. “It’s funny, we talked about the album title and it seemed like Get It Out was the obvious. That’s largely what this is – let’s get this music out of us that really doesn’t have an outlet anywhere else. It’s a channel we tapped into by the two of us being together. We found that we each have some things inside of us that are perfect for A&A. And together we developed some things that lined right up; similar emotions, similar thoughts. It was very collaborative on this record. So that title seemed to be a natural fit. We did a photo shoot, and once we started getting the graphics laid out, the broken glass thing was a really cool effect. It was actually Frank’s idea to start putting the little pieces of our face there because, basically we are all one person, but as we go through life, there’s fragments, bits and pieces that get broken off. In those pieces, there’s a reflection of different emotions, different periods of our lives. Some are happy, some sad, some grieving, others are angry. We kind of ran the gamut of emotions. The album cover is really meant to depict what you’re going to hear. You’re going to hear all of those emotions on this record.”

Bringing Get It Out back home, David has a family connection on the album, specifically the song “All There Is”. “Yes, yes, my dear sweet daughter Athena. She’s a very naturally gifted musician. She has perfect pitch, which very few people have. We can drive down the street, she’ll hear a car horn and say, ‘That’s a C sharp.’ She’ll hear a phone ring, “That’s a G.’ I have relative pitch, she’s got perfect pitch. She’s a classically trained pianist, she taught herself guitar, she sings in the jazz choir and the college choir. She’s produced EDM records for kids in high school. Then one day she came downstairs and said, ‘Dad, I had a dream and I made a decision, I’m not going to get into the music business after you told me how hard it is.’ Oh good, I got away with that one! She’s a sharp kid… but there was this moment on a track where I wanted to… it had this nice fadeout. I thought it could use some haunting piano, something that drifts the listener out of the track without it being an abrupt ending. So, we went over to my friend Randy’s studio down the street from my house, put some headphones on her, mic’ed up the piano, had her play and man, she banged it right out. It’s awesome to start bringing family members into the family business.” “All There Is” is different from everything else on the album, and it’s the last of the new batch, making it a good way to separate the fresh material from the older EP. “Exactly. It’s got a nice spot in the running order. It’s a very pensive, emotional way to wind down what you just heard through the record.”

Garnering copious amounts of attention are the guest guitarists who have lent their talents to Get It Out. By far the biggest six-stringer to appear is Ace Frehley of KISS, who plays on the song “Late”. “Right. Frank and I are huge KISS fans! The idea came up between me, Jay and Frank to ask Ace to put a solo on a track. When we were putting this down, we were thinking about the energy; that’s the first qualifier for having a guest. We weren’t looking to have guests on here just to try and sell the record. It’s really about the music. The one thing is, Frank and I are not astute lead guitar players, so we thought we’d get some of our friends to pop a solo on this for us. Gus G. (Firewind, Ozzy Osbourne) being the first one, from the first round of three songs we did. Of course, Nita Strauss (Alice Cooper) is incredible, Satchel (Steel Panther), and on it goes. Everybody made such an incredible contribution to the songs, even Jon Donais from Anthrax. But yea, the Ace Frehley one, that’s a total fanboy moment for me! Of course, we’ve got to know Ace over the years as a friend and fellow contemporary artist; but there’s still that moment when you’re a fan. To have him put the solo down – that one took a while too because of conflicting schedules and everything else going on. But man, when we got the solo from him, we were just like, ‘Oh thank you Lord.’ It’s so cool! It’s the follow-up to receiving something from The KISS Army when we were in our teenage years. Oh my God! Ace delivered a solo. It fits great and we’re very thankful; it’s our Wayne and Garth moment.”

Nita Strauss is the only guest to appear on two songs, those being “Part Of Me” and “Slip”. “You know, Nita put her tracks down a little while ago. She’s obviously been very busy with Alice Cooper, and now her own solo career. When I heard her solo, I was like, ‘Holy Shit!’ It was just ferocious! She can keep up with the best of the boys. There’s no pussyfooting around with her, she brought her A-game. It’s great to have our friends doing it, and I’ll use this as a transition to, here’s Frank and I – two bass players. We both can play rhythm guitar, Frank is more strumming and chords on his songs. Things like ‘Here Again’, I wrote and played all those riffs; I’m a pretty accomplished thrash metal rhythm guitar player. I can play almost all the Megadeth stuff; my chops are pretty good in that realm. But I’m not the hard rock guy, and I’m not a soloist. It brought us to the great divide inside this record. So, let’s call our friends who are esteemed lead guitar players, get the best of the best.”

“But another thing that happened with this record, and it happened as far back as the first EP with ‘Here Again’, which is, we pulled out an eight-string bass, added a nice distortion patch, and suddenly it became a lead guitar! I’m sitting there, shredding licks, and a lot of times, a different instrument will make you play a different way. A different tone will inspire you to pull something out that you wouldn’t have come up with on your own. That eight-string bass… I actually wrote the Megadeth song ‘Dawn Patrol’ on Jimmy Bain’s eight-string bass, back in 1989. I love the eight-string bass, and it largely became the defining sound of Altitudes & Attitude. If in doubt during a part, we would reach for the eight-string bass. It created some great intro pieces and cool little moments where… it’s the instrument that filled in all the gaps throughout the record. Thank God for the eight-string bass.”