Mandatory Megadeth #3 · 2:43am Sep 14th, 2018
Y’know, it occurred to me a day after posting MM#1 that if any of you wanted to, you literally could have just followed the ‘similar videos’ feed on YouTube and listened to this whole album by now. It’s not like I’m holding any keys or have the ability to guard access to this album, so really, me posting them every week like this is kind of moot.
So yeah, I’m a dumbass. But hey, I said I was gonna do it, so here it goes.
Architecture of Aggression
Webster’s Dictionary defines ‘underrated’ as: THIS FUCKING SONG.
This was a track that I often skipped over in the early days of listening to this CD; it wasn’t until later that I came to appreciate its awesomeness, and it quickly became—and still is—one of my favourite tracks on the album. Honestly, who could resist that inescapable groove? Once this fucker gets inside my head, I can’t get rid of it. I’m probably gonna have it stuck in there for like three days after doing this post.
While not a technical masterpiece by any means, this track is still a good one to jam to with its heavy riffs, a fucking brilliant guitar solo and great lyrics, which are dark, yet oddly poetic. I wish I could write prose the way Dave (Mustaine) writes lyrics... but I can’t, which is why I write about labia—because it keeps people dudes interested!
Anyway... enjoy, and I’ll see you next week!
PS - quoted from songfacts.com:
This song was inspired by the massive bombing of Iraq on January 16, 1991 that initiated Operation Desert Storm. The sound samples at the end of the song are the voices of CNN correspondents (Peter Arnett and Bernard Shaw) in Baghdad, Iraq, describing what they saw that night.
All of this. This over 9000 and then some.
Architecture of Aggression was one of the standout tracks for me once I finally quit screwing around with Megadeth's "greatest hits" offerings and actually bought some real albums. Cool lyrics, megatons of groove... what's not to love?
Another real standout for me was The World Needs a Hero (mostly the track, but the album is good too). It's like the epitome of Dave's quasi-paranoid-political-rant-persona thrown on top of some killer drums and (eventually) a simple but potent groove:
Really though, as I've said elsewhere, this gets into one of the cool aspects of Megadeth: they've got tons of different stuff, and you never know what they're gonna do next. Some of it holds up better than others over time, but they're never boring!
Though in the era of "Best Buy Exclusives" you sometimes get annoying stuff like how A House Divided--one of the better tracks off Super Collider--was only available as a bonus track on the exclusive edition.
I mean, I'm not gonna sit here and say it's even in Megadeth's top 10 songs, but I will say it was top 3 on the album... I see no reason why it should've been relegated to bonus track status.
But then I'm not gonna sit here and rag on Super Collider, either. I feel like it's mostly just a couple of tracks that drag down the experience... and that's what the skip button is for!
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‘The World Needs a Hero’ is definitely a unique track; that bass line always reminded me of swing music or something like that. Great lyrics, too, like the first line:
HA! Awesome. He always did such a good job of portraying covertly corrupt government narratives.
TWNAH was actually my first exposure to this band. Right at the tail end of my final year of high school, (2001) a friend of mine—one of those guys who owned EVERY damn CD in existence—showed it to me. I was mostly a Metallica/Ozzy/GnR kind of guy at the time, but I was very quickly impressed by these Megadeth guys, and it wasn’t long before they became my band of choice. ‘Dread and the Fugitive Mind’ was the very first track I actually heard, which is kind of funny because of what the first line of the song is...
Also, Degrasso/Pitrelli were a damn decent combo.
Shit, I didn’t know there was a bonus track for ‘Super Collider.’ That album I admit I didn’t get into much until recently because I was too busy with life at that time. ‘Dystopia’ was kind of the same story. I bought them when they came out, of course, but I didn’t really sit down and listen to them—maybe because they were the first ones I bought digitally, and the experience of unwrapping and putting them in the CD player was missing? I dunno.
It wasn’t until I joined this site and started writing that I got caught up on those last two albums—both at once. I have the headphones on whenever I write; in fact, it’s almost gotten to the point where I can’t write without having music in my ears.