DAVE ELLEFSON Says MEGADETH “Lost The Plot” During The Risk Era: “We Zigged And The Rest Of The World Zagged”

On the latest episode of the “100 Songs That Define Heavy Metal” podcast, hosted by Brian Slagel, former Megadeth bassist David Ellefson revisited one of metal’s longest-running arguments: did grunge really kill hard rock and metal in the early ’90s, or did it just force bands to evolve?

Speaking less like a bitter survivor and more like someone who’s had time to analyze the fallout, Ellefson walked through how Megadeth stayed on the road, stayed on the radio, and occasionally lost the plot while everyone else was chasing Seattle.

The standard story goes like this: Seattle explodes, flannel takes over MTV, and the Sunset Strip gets swept into the gutter. Ellefson doesn’t really argue with that part of the narrative, but he’s careful to point out that grunge’s crosshairs weren’t aimed at bands like Megadeth, Slayer, or Metallica.

If there’s a phrase that sums up the ’90s for legacy metal bands, Ellefson nails it with one brutal question: “Do you wanna survive or not?”

For him, the decade wasn’t about clinging to purity; it was certainly more about understanding that heavy music is still part of show business. He put it in blunt terms: “Look, we played the game. Because it’s a game. When you’re in showbiz, it’s a game. And so you play the game. And, look, part of it is your self-interest. Do you wanna survive or not? You wanna be back out on the road again, paying your mortgage next year? Well, then we gotta play the game. Sometimes you do get a little beholden to the golden handcuffs of the paycheck. Just like in any business, it’s like anybody going to work. Do what the boss says. Well, sometimes the boss in music isn’t anyone in the band; the boss is the public. In fact, they’re always the boss, quite honestly. They pretty much dictate the course of your career,” he explained (via Blabbermouth)

Ellefson was basically saying that even a band as influential as Megadeth had to answer to the crowd, not to some idealized version of what thrash should have been.

He recalled how the conversation often gets oversimplified and brought up a chat with journalist and author Greg Prato: “It’s interesting you mentioned Seattle. I had [journalist and book author] Greg Prato on my podcast, and he had written this Megadeth book, and he pointed out too that, as you said, grunge kind of killed hair metal. [But] those guys [in all those bands] were fans of what we were doing. They were Slayer, Metallica, and Megadeth fans. They were not against what thrash metal was. So I’ve always stood up for grunge, ’cause I liked a lot of it. A lot of the Nirvana stuff, it’s punky, and I think it’s cool, man.”

If grunge shook up the landscape, the real question for a band like Megadeth was how to move within that new reality without losing themselves. For Ellefson, the ’90s grunge wave was the moment that forced them to reconsider their trajectory.

Talking about that period, he said: “The rise of grunge was the turning point. And that’s why I think for us, by the time we got to the Risk album [in 1999], we had different management at that point, and we lost the plot — we did,” he admitted.

“And we took it as far as we could go, as far as being sort of a melodic radio rock band. I think Cryptic Writings [1997], we completely hit the mark. That was a very successful record. And, yeah, musically you can hear there’s a great spirit in it, you can hear it’s authentic, you can hear it’s really still us, just kind of moving the goalposts a little bit so we could explore some stuff.”

“Risk, as our friend [former Megadeth manager] Larry Mazer said, we zigged, and the rest of the world zagged. I think that was the best way to look at it. We went lighter, and the rest of sort of the modern rock, modern metal regime went harder and heavier. And it took a few years to correct the ship and right the course from that one.”