31 Days of Music - Megadeth - Countdown to Extinction

Junior english class, a fellow student showed up with this album and soon after, I heard the first single on the local hard rock station. One listen is all it took and I was hooked. Previously, all I really thought about metal was the 80s hair bands, and while there was some similarity with this music, it definitely wasn’t the goofy excess of the prior decade. This had a darker, more grim tonality and lyrics to match.

I’ve always been a pretty easy going guy so you wouldn’t necessarily think of Megadeth as a band that would have a lot of appeal. True, it was more of an extended phase of my adolescence, when I was trying to make me into who I wanted to be that I really enjoyed this band, but I still can hear this album and remember exactly why I liked them.

Their musical had a lot of creativity and the technical excellence in what they do that makes me really appreciate a band. So much music that is produced lacks one or both of these things that I find critical to even the most minimal enjoyment of music. It was nice to finally found a metal band that I felt really had both; and had it in spades.

Their next album was also good, but just never hooked me in the way this one did. I expect that is more a sign of who I had become by the time that next album was released than it did with the music itself. Still, I’ll always associate this music to the Ravenloft books I was reading at the time when it was released. I can’t hear this playlist without pieces of dark fantasy plotlines floating through my memory.