MEGADETH Bassist On Upcoming Album: We're Not Carbon-Copying And Duplicating 'Dystopia'

MEGADETH bassist David Ellefson recently spoke to Meltdown of Detroit, Michigan's WRIF 101.1 FM radio station about the progress of the songwriting sessions for the band's follow-up to 2016's "Dystopia" album.

"What we've been doing this whole last year with MEGADETH is we've been taking all these ideas, going into a studio and laying them down in sort of a proper format so we can start analyzing what we have and start piecing songs together," David said (hear audio below) "We're a riff band — we write riffs — and that's kind of a big part of what I do."

Adding that MEGADETH does not yet have a tentative release date for its next album, Ellefson said that the band has been working on mostly fresh musical ideas for the forthcoming disc. "We've pretty much cleaned out the vault from over the years on the more recent records," he said. "With 'Dystopia', it was a good two-year tour, and we even went back to Europe and over to Indonesia this year, so, really, it was almost a three-year album-and-tour cycle that we were in. So this last year was just really writing and compiling pretty much all new stuff that we have. We looked at 'Dystopia' and went, 'Okay, that seems to be a good benchmark of what the fans like, of music that's fun to play. It works well live.' So we're not carbon-copying and duplicating 'Dystopia', but that's definitely a benchmark for us."

MEGADETH's next LP will be the first to feature drummmer Dirk Verbeuren (ex-SOILWORK),who joined the band nearly three years ago.

MEGADETH will support OZZY OSBOURNE on the next North American leg of the BLACK SABBATH singer's "No More Tours 2" in May, June and July.

MEGADETH's first-ever Megacruise aboard the Norwegian Jewel will set sail on October 13 from Los Angeles, California and hit ports of San Diego, California and Ensenada, Mexico before returning on October 18.