New York, NY (Top40 Charts) In October 1994, MEGADETH and their label took a chance with a new venture. To celebrate the release of the YOUTHANASIA album, the pioneering band established Megadeth, Arizona. It was the first-ever band website on the Internet.
The website - as Billboard (October 31, 2024) noted in a story celebrating its anniversary - was "based on the location of the band's new studio in Phoenix," and "was the concept for the first-ever artist website. In addition to the chat room, called the Megadiner, the site featured an art and digital-postcard repository, Vic's Cactus Hut and Souvenir Shop, a newspaper titled Horrorscopes and links to videos and online-radio tracks."
"When the internet came into our lives, we really didn't understand it, just like anyone else," MEGADETH founder Dave Mustaine explains. "But we had the greatest opportunity because we were the ones chosen to be the guinea pig. When the people over at Capitol had shown us what this was, the basic layout and some of the artwork, the images were all cool. The woman that had done the images had done a bunch of great images and made it really look cool like the stickers that are on the back of campers and shit like that, so I thought it was really great and exciting. Again, no one really knew what it was, so once we clicked on the launch button and it started all whizzing and banging and all that kind of stuff, it was remarkable. There's been no looking back since." (See below for DAVE Q&A about Megadeth, Arizona).
Meanwhile, the multi-platinum-selling and GRAMMY® Award-winning rockers just wrapped their U.S. tour which followed successful runs in Latin
America (Peru, Chile, Argentina, Brazil and México) and
Europe (Sweden, Italy, France, Germany, and more) and garnered stellar reviews (see below). Next up, MEGADETH will head into the studio to record new music, and look for additional dates to be announced for 2025. Here's some critical feedback from MEGADETH's recent tour:
"Dave Mustaine and company steamrolled
Houston with a setoff of hits encompassing their 40+ year career, highlighted by 'Angry Again,' 'Hangar 18,' 'Sweating Bullets,' 'Trust' and the smash 'Symphony Of Destruction'…The light show was nothing short of phenomenal, especially during songs like 'Tornado Of Souls' and 'Dystopia.'" -KNAC (Houston, TX, 8/3/24)
"Standout songs like 'Trust' and 'Peace Sells' made it easy to forget there were even two other bands on the bill, but when
Megadeth ripped through 'Mechanix' it was sheer bliss." -PHOENIX NEW TIMES (Phoenix, AZ , 8/8/24)
"In 2022, when
Megadeth released their sixteenth album The Sick, The Dying…And the Dead, it was not just an album that fans loved, it was also one of the band's most successful. Hearing the title-track of the album kick off Megadeth's set for the evening really brought the point home - you just don't mess with the best…Megadeth always puts on a clinic and what separated them from everyone over a period of four decades." - CRYPTIC ROCK (Denver, CO, 8/6/24)
"A blistering, hour and a half set filled with a voracious amount of classic
Megadeth thrash…" - WILL TO ROCK (Los Angeles, CA, 8/9/24)
"Something about this
Megadeth show felt particularly special above any other that I've seen in recent years. The band was truly firing on all cylinders, and by the time the opening notes rang out on 'Holy Wars…The Punishment Due,' I was exhausted and completely satisfied. Decades later,
Megadeth is still a band worth seeing live." - SF SHAMELESS (San Francisco, CA, 8/11/24)
"The thunderous chant of "MEGADETH, MEGADETH, MEGADETH" echoed through the venue, setting the tone for the fans' unwavering enthusiasm throughout the band's entire performance…Attending a
Megadeth concert is a must for metal fans of all ages." - LA METAL MEDIA (Phoenix, AZ, 8/8/24)
"Dave Mustaine has not lost a step, and his current lineup featuring
James LoMenzo on bass and backing vocals, Dirk Verbeuren (Drums), and Teemu Mäntysaari (guitars and backing vocals) did not fail to deliver an explosive set featuring their defining songs from all eras. The highlights of the 17-song set were 'Angry Again,' 'Sweating Bullets,' 'Skin O' My Teeth,' and 'Countdown to Extinction'- delivered with an intensity unmatched on recorded medium to an ecstatic crowd that remained on their feet from the first note to the fading refrain of the encore." -NM ENTERTAINS (Albuquerque, NM, 8/5/24)
"Mustaine was a transfixing figure onstage, his signature flowing hair rippling in the breeze as he ripped solo after solo and led the band through songs from 11 different albums in his catalog." - ROCK CELLAR MAGAZINE (Los Angeles, CA, 8/15/24)
"Dave Mustaine was on fire on both nights of the tour in LA…There are just not enough successful words to describe Megadeth's performance on this evening and throughout the tour." - METAL INSIDER (Los Angeles, CA, 8/15/24)
"Megadeth brought their iconic thrash metal mastery to West Palm Beach, and fans of all ages converged to witness one of the most legendary bands in metal… The energy in the amphitheater was electric as Mustaine's signature riffs and snarling vocals reverberated through the crowd… Megadeth's performance was a masterclass in precision and passion—brutal yet technical, polished yet raw." - CBS 12 NEWS (West Palm Beach, FL, 8/25/24)
"Megadeth's concert at PNC
Music Pavilion Friday may not have been a comeback, but it sure felt like one. A triumphant one in fact. Aided by a killer light show and a trio of seasoned (yet still a bit younger) musicians, 62-year-old Dave Mustaine and his band were in better form than I'd ever seen them." -CHARLOTTE OBSERVER (9/7/24)
"Megadeth pulled zero punches with an all-killer-no-filler setlist…Megadeth is a must-see band for any metal fan. Witnessing this level of energy and impact they carry with each note, riff, guitar solo, and bass groove can only be experienced with your own eyes and ears in person, not through a video, to appreciate this level of high-level, unparalleled showmanship." - NEW NOISE MAGAZINE (Tinley Park, IL, 9/3/24)
"Megadeth's creator and sole original member, lead singer and guitarist Dave Mustaine, conjured the vigor that made him a heavy-metal icon on the band's classic material. His trademark biting vocal delivery on fan favorite 'Sweating Bullets' earned some of the loudest and most sustained cheers of the evening, and on 'Symphony of Destruction,' he delivered his best and longest guitar solo of the evening." -TIMES UNION (Albany, NY, 9/10/24)
DAVE MUSTAINE Q&A:
Q: Without a model, how did you know what would be appealing to fans?
DAVE MUSTAINE (DM): "You know, we didn't have a model to do that so the only way that I knew that this was going to be appealing to the fans was my experience as a tape trader in the very beginning. When I was in my first band Panic, and then freshly into Metallica, we would trade tapes with people around the world and people would write letters, if you could believe that-Jeez, snail mail back in the day -but we also had really cool other magazines that would tell us stuff that was happening. This cut that down from weeks to get a reply from one of your friends to just a couple of seconds.
With the way that the website was set up, we didn't really know much about it with the layout or anything like that because when you think about the normal blueprint of stuff and when they say that there is a room here and a room there, you think about a two-dimensional drawing and the overview, looking down into a floor plan. So for me, thinking about what all these different rooms are, it was, I don't know, maybe a misnomer. It didn't work for my mind's eye to see what the layout of what this internet and this website and this chat room would be, but I figured out that that stuff didn't matter, it was just a word. As we clicked on other stuff like photos and mp3s and then we got into more of the advanced stuff-the chat room and so on-that was something that just blew everybody's mind."
Q: There's a funny story about a call with Gene Simmons, can you recount it?
DM: "When
Megadeth Arizona was launched, a lot of people went there because they couldn't understand, the same way that I couldn't, what all of these rooms were on the internet and having a chat room and so on. So it was really exciting one by one as we would hear people that noticed it and I was blown away when I heard from one of my favorite musicians and rockstars, Gene Simmons. Legend has it, he said 'I want a website just like Mustaine's' and you can imagine how stoked I was to hear that. And I had asked his manager, Doc McGee, and I had gotten a video sent back to me of Gene repeating what he had said. So hats off to you Gene. Love you guys!"
Q: Media and the internet has changed so drastically since the launch of the site. What/how as a band are you continuing to engage your audience?
DM: "When we first started out, we were stuck having to write to our fans, whether it was typing letters out on typewriters if you can believe that, or getting a handwritten letter, and I used to do that a lot, in fact I got something that was a photocopy just the other day from one of my friends of a letter that I had sent them and it was really nostalgic and cool. But you're trying to conduct business and when you want to be an international band, it sucked. When we started playing, a lot of the bands we knew in town, they really didn't look at things like it was going to be an international thing. They were just worried about being popular in their hometown, which for me, never crossed my mind, I wanted to be the biggest band in the world, so we would write, write, write. We would trade tapes with people around the world. Every once in a while, I would pick up the phone and make a long-distance phone call and have to deal with the shock of seeing the phone bill later. But once the
Megadeth Arizona site started, that was great. We were able to push the launch button on this site and go into the Megadiner and like I said before, anyone that was a member of Megeadiner in the beginning are definitely IT. They have tremendous street credibility. Now, with the chats and stuff that had happened with the launch of Megadiner, people have chat rooms everywhere. We were just in a chat room the other day getting tech support. You gotta remember that a chat room is a chat room. It was really neat to be able to develop all of this stuff together with the fans that we have become friends with. Megadeth.com was born out of
Megadeth Arizona and that has led to some really long lasting friendships. I'm looking forward to the party tonight.
Q: Will you be doing anything on the current site to honor the anniversary? Should fans be looking for any easter eggs?
DM: "In honor of the 30th anniversary for Youthanasia and
Megadeth Arizona, I participated in a chat room on the
Megadeth Discord server. Fans were able to ask questions and chat with me directly, in real time, just like back in the day. Before the chat started, everyone watched a stream of our old documentary, 'Evolver,' which was cool. We are also adding something special to Megadeth.com to pay tribute to
Megadeth Arizona and some of the rooms from the past like Megadiner, Vic's Cactus Hut, and the
Digital Drive in if you haven't seen it already. There will be some easter eggs you can find if you play around with the page and search hard enough."
Q: The website launch was tied to the release of Youthanasia, which means that album is also celebrating an anniversary. The album was recorded in Arizona, how was the recording process different than in a studio in LA, NY or another big city?
DM: "Youthanasia was recorded in Arizona, but it could've been the moon for all I care. We built the different sound enclosures for each artist, and we built a control room for Max Norman to work in, and we had to get this gigantic console and get that moved out to Arizona and into this control room we had built. That was cool if you were taking a shop class in highschool or something, but having to go build a studio you have to build a record in…I don't know. I liked it, but it was unnecessary."
