Megadeth
Cryptic Writings

Year 1997: after the excellent "Youthanasia" (1994) and the negligible "Hidden Treasures" (1995, a collection of some covers, b-sides, and unreleased tracks written for the soundtracks of a few films), Megadeth returned to the market with this "Cryptic Writings."

In those years, having already achieved worldwide fame and popularity, the good Mustaine must have had the question pop into his mind: "What to do, continue in the wake of the latest albums and propose a very mainstream heavy-metal, or go back a bit to the ancient thrash glories of the '80s?" The answer must have been, given that Mustaine is anything but modest, "why settle for one of the two options when we can achieve both?!"

The result is an album that probably ends up displeasing both factions: totally hard-rock songs that are very easily assimilated alternate with some that vainly try to reconnect with the glorious years of "Peace Sells..." or "Rust in Peace," trying to appear hard and badass but instead sounding like a blatant attempt not to forget what was done in the early years of their career and not to disappoint the most extreme and demanding fans; paradoxically, these are the very songs that turn out to be the weakest on the platter: an example is "The Disintegrators" and "Vortex," flat and predictable songs that also denote a creative vein dangerously close to exhaustion (a perfect example in this case is the concluding "FFF", identical in every respect to "Motorbreath" by their "cousins" Metallica).

It's much better to listen to the songs that now characterize the new path undertaken by 'Deth, following in the footsteps of their love-hated Californian cousins: starting with the opener "Trust", the best song Megadeth has written in the post-thrash era: dark in its bass and drum beginning, engaging in the verses and the catchy chorus (capable of getting stuck in the listener's head from the very first listen) and perfect in its continuous changes from energetic riffs to more subdued acoustic guitar parts, reaching up to the melodic solo that picks up the line of the refrain.

Other noteworthy episodes include the subsequent "Almost Honest", an energetic hard rock piece chosen as a single, also characterized by the alternation of electric guitar riffs with slower and more melodic parts accompanied by the acoustic; the acoustic guitar takes center stage again in "Use the Man", with an almost country rhythm(!) in the verses until the explosion of solos and speed in the last part: perhaps one of the best tracks on the entire album. Also of good level is "A Secret Place", another single accompanied by a video, characterized by a very well-constructed structure and another easily grasped chorus (even if the main riff sounds terribly overused...) and "She Wolf", with a captivating beginning, a verse where Dave seems to spit the lyrics and a chorus that contrasts effectively with the hardness of the main riff: excellent is also the closure entrusted to the Mustaine-Friedman duo, offering a sequence of solos and more melodic riffs.

In between, more or less banal and predictable pieces include the already mentioned "The Disintegrators" and "Vortex", "Mastermind", a song that serves more than anything else as filler and perhaps would have been more suitable as a possible b-side of one of the (many) singles extracted from the album; "I'll Get Even", marking the trend later strongly developed in the subsequent "Risk" of composing ballads with melancholic atmospheres; "Sin", a good hard rock track but nothing more, and the highly original (at least for 'Deth...) "Have Cool, Will Travel". In this song, the presence of a harmonica (!) is noteworthy, managing to create an almost Texan landscape atmosphere: also here, there is the presence of acoustic guitar inserts in the refrain: it turns out to be an enjoyable song, certainly the most original of the platter.

In essence, it is an album not very well defined: on one side, there are excellent ideas in the form of tracks in pure hard-rock style (or rather Radio-rock as it was defined by 'Deth themselves at the time), on the other side pale and useless attempts to revive the glories of an era now gone forever... the level of the musicians is, as usual, excellent; the proposed music, although now very far from the genre that had brought them to the Olympus of metal, is still far superior to many things still heard today in the "rock-heavy-commercial" field and perhaps also to Metallica's "Load" and "ReLoad": it is certain that it is perhaps one of Megadeth's most experimental records, but also the one that marked their irreversible decline in sales terms primarily, and in consideration by the most uncompromising fans, now betrayed by the commercialization of their idols.