Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine has finally revealed who played bass on the band’s upcoming album, The Sick, The Dying and The Dead. In a new interview, the frontman disclosed that it was Steve Di Giorgio of fellow veteran thrash act Testament.
Last year, longtime Megadeth bassist David Ellefson was ousted from the band after a compromising video surfaced of him engaging in an “embarrassing” online sexual encounter with a young woman. Mustaine promptly fired Ellefson from the group, stating at the time, “While we do not know every detail of what occurred, with an already strained relationship, what has already been revealed now is enough to make working together impossible moving forward.”
Mustaine also announced that the band would hire a new musician to re-record all the bass parts on the new album, but never revealed who it was until now. While speaking with SiriusXM’s Jose Mangin, Mustaine let the cat out of the bag.
“We obviously had that weird little … well, it wasn’t little, but we had something happen that we needed to make a decision on, and it set us back a little bit timing-wise,” Mustaine said. “Because we needed to recalibrate and find someone to perform the bass parts, and we found who I thought was the perfect fit for us while I decided what to do… Do you know who it was? … It was Steve Di Giorgio. You’re the first person I told.”
The Megadeth frontman added, “It was a good choice. I didn’t think about anybody else at the time. I was thinking about ‘who’s the hottest guy out there that can play these new songs?’ [My son] Justis told me one of the fastest songs we’ve ever written is on this record. I don’t care what anybody says — bass may be less strings than guitar, but it’s difficult to play, if you’re like me. I have a real hard time playing the bass. I wrote the riff for ‘Peace Sells … But Who’s Buying?’ for Pete’s sake, but you know … having to jam some of those parts that fast, it just kills your fingers.”
While Di Giorgio played on the the upcoming album, which is currently slated for a July 8th release, he is not performing with Megadeth on tour. That honor belongs to returning Megadeth member James LoMenzo, who was announced prior to last year’s first leg of the band’s co-headlining tour with Lamb of God.
LoMenzo will continue to perform with Megadeth when they kick off the second leg of their tour with Lamb of God on April 9th in Las Vegas. Tickets for the tour, which features support from Trivium and In Flames, are available via Ticketmaster.
Di Giorgio, meanwhile, will be hitting the road at the same time, as Testament launch the “Bay Strikes Back Tour” with Exodus and Death Angel on April 9th, as well. Testament will be sporting a new look themselves, with the recent announcement that former Slayer drummer Dave Lombardo has joined the band. Tickets for that outing are available here.
