Megadeth
Th1rt3en

I had been waiting with almost crushing patience for the new album by Megadeth. After listening to the collaboration album between Metallica and Lou Reed, Lulu, which nearly made me lose my mind and especially left me with just a huge question mark, a new album was added to my personal list of “most disappointing (not bad) albums of 2011”; I was hoping at least that the leader of Megadeth, Dave Mustaine, and the rest of the crew would stop this cartload that seemed to have no intention of stopping. They kind of succeeded, kind of didn’t. Let it be clear, it didn’t bore me to the point of contemplating suicide, which happened with Lulu, but this album is so full of ups and downs that it’s hard to get a clear idea of it.

For a while, there had been talk of not-so-good relations between the record label Roadrunner and Father Dave, who accused them a while back for the poor promotion of the album "Endgame" and for other issues. Let's add in a long world tour, during which the band took advantage of those few moments of respite to work on new material and then record it. Well, these are certainly not excuses to justify a mediocre executed work. So I set everything aside and started listening with good hopes. And yet...

The first track is a song that was already released last year, Sudden Death, specifically prepared for the video game Guitar Hero Warriors Of Rock, as the last and most difficult song to play. It had also been nominated at the Grammy Awards, but the band didn’t win even this time after the ninth nomination. Anyway, nothing alarming so far, on the contrary, it’s a good song, a great start, but those ultra-technical solos by Dave and Chris are a bit overdone. The next track is Public Enemy No. 1, released as a single at the beginning of September. It was the song that kept the hopes high for a generally good work, fun and catchy, dedicated to the figure of Al Capone, even if the heavy side prevails over the thrash side. The video dedicated to the single is fun. It continues with Whose Life (Is It Anyways), decidedly inferior to the previous one and feels like something already heard, forgettable after a few listens, patience. Next is We The People, definitely tiring, they could have done better. Many consider Guns, Drugs, & Money one of the worst and most sycophantic tracks of the album and of the band in general, it might be, however the hard rock rhythmic base is quite good, it almost seems like a discarded piece from the "Countdown To Extinction/Youthanasia" era, definitely underrated. And we reach the end of the first half of the album, which closes with a great rise thanks to a decent piece, perhaps one of the best, called Never Dead, which offers us a hard and very fast Megadethian thrash metal in a modern key (it would be really stupid to compare the golden times with the present days). This song is also part of the soundtrack of the video game of the same name, released last January. Unfortunately, the second half of the record starts, which is really more mediocre and boring. There are too many tracks that leave you indifferent, are easily forgotten, sometimes resemble each other, and worse yet, are almost all b-sides of already published albums, therefore reproposed with today's lineup. These tracks are New World Order, Black Swan, Millennium Of The Blind and Deadly Nightshade (the latter absurdly reminds me of Alice In Chains' sounds, I still haven’t understood how it is possible…). I didn’t immediately discard them only because they’re leftover tracks, the reasons are those I’ve already explained before. Just a note for Fast Lane, fully sufficient, although it has something already heard from the "Endgame" album. Finally, it's worth devoting a few more lines to the final and homonymous track, 13, with an acoustic guitar intro, which directly refers to In My Darkest Hour, only that instead of being dedicated to his deceased friend Cliff Burton it narrates a summary of the turbulent history of the Megadeth frontman and those who have been part of it. Yet, as the listening progresses, the song ends up vaguely resembling a piece present in the remastered version of "Youthanasia", Millennium of the Blind.

Thus concludes the thirteenth effort of Dave and company. I must say that at first, I was surprisingly disappointed for the many reasons explained, but with a third listen of the album, I managed to reevaluate my judgment. I do not deny that the entire record is played more than decently, that’s certainly not missing. Despite that… I expected more, much more. I couldn’t distinguish Chris Broderick from Mustaine at all, I found him far too cold in his performances. This is somewhat typical of progressive metal guitarists, but not this much. At this point, I terribly miss the previous album, at least there his guitar had a more chaotic and powerful sound. Another criticism goes to drummer Shawn Drover, who has been in the band since 2005, whom I found rather flat and simple, as if he just performed the task assigned to him. He could have done more, given that he is a technically above-average drummer. Nothing particular to say about Mustaine and bassist David Ellefson, they did their part, not excellently, but decently. This is an album that I recommend only to Megadeth fans. Others, if they want, can try (or dare) to listen to it and like it, but this will require many listens and a lot of patience. In conclusion, I don’t understand why fill the album with already written and published tracks. Maybe it’s a spite to Roadrunner, from whom they’d like to end every relationship and leave. Maybe they didn’t have more time to write new material. Maybe because the ideas are really finished. I don’t know. I still have to understand this too...

SCORE = 65 / 100

(I apologize for the huge delay, a good 4 months since the last review, but work, the “real” job, takes precedence!)