By Martin Popoff
As I write this, Megadeth's new passive-aggressive album The World Needs A Hero came out yesterday, punctuated here in my hometown of Toronto, with one of the special fan contest/press acoustic gigs the band is performing in celebration of their new rockier document.
Here's the press summary as far as I see it. A few writer types I know think the album blows (there's the first conundrum: does it matter what we pronounce from the mount?), a few more love it, and many like myself are quite pleased all around, except for a vague dissatisfaction that it is a fence-sitter, minor complaints adding up. There's the two 'Sweating Bullets' remakes, the 'Am I Evil' remake, a dragging mellow spot 2/3 the way through, an increasingly sneering and incomprehensible Dave (until the full version came in, I thought the opening lyric was "Behind closed doors all you live for is TV"), even if the man's lyrics are quite interesting and humourous within the metal realm, as well as a bit Confucian. Dave is a crank, but he is emphatically an original. I add up all the grades from people who spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff, and I'm hearing 7.5 out of 10, even if I'm also hearing a lot of people doing a lot of pontificating and talking and caring and listening and getting annoyed and voicing, far out of proportion to that perhaps modest rekkid rating. Megadeth is as controversial as they've been for the last two records, only this time, the band seems subtly to have the upper hand, a Vic Rattle-hand that just might be clawing back more fans than it lets slip through its bony digits.
MEGADETH - Who Do We Think We Are! Page 2