Megadeth’s third album So Far, So Good, So What! carried on the fine work made by Dave Mustaine and David Ellefson on Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying? Megadeth in the space of two consecutive albums became one of the quintessential American Heavy Metal bands, of which the core group of Mustaine and Ellefson certainly rivalled the Metallica foursome of Hetfield, Ulrich, Hammett and the much missed Cliff Burton and Anthrax’s Scott Ian, Charlie Benante, Frank Bello and Joey Belladonna as leaders of a brand new pack and iconic American Heavy Metal.
Released in 1988, So Far, So Good, So What! featured Chuck Behler and Jeff Young who had replaced the sacked Chris Poland and Gar Samuelson on guitar and drums and it was the second of four albums that continued to sound bigger, brasher and subsequently more brilliant that were interspaced between the band’s debut slow-burner Killing Is My Business…And Business Is Good and the sufferable Youthanasia.
Unlike Peace Sells…, Rust In Peace and Countdown to Extinction, So Far, So Good, So What! has not aged well. That’s not to say it still doesn’t have the power to send chills up the spine on songs such as, Set The World Afire, In My Darkest Hour, the cover version of the Sex Pistol’s classic Anarchy in the U.K. and the chilling Mary Jane but it a phenomenon that tends to hit a lot of Metal/Thrash albums and it seems only the very best survive over time. For its time though it was superb and kept Megadeth almost stride for stride with their perennial Thrash Metal cohorts Metallica and their fourth album which they would release later that year, the phenomenal …And Justice For All.
So Far, So Good, So What! opens with the instrumental Into The Lungs Of Hell and this frames the album perfectly. It is almost possible to believe the sweat, the dust and the sulphur that parades throughout the opening segment is real, tangible and filled with the rotting breath of what had gone before and to be honest it is there to be believed. The dust clears; the mucus that has got to the lungs is forcibly set free but is laid waste in the mono sound of The Ink Spots singing the opening line to their 1941 hit I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire. Two very different groups, almost nothing in common apart from being hugely popular in their respective eras and the use of some very clever word play. The song by The Ink Spots deals with the idea of love and a man recognising that he is nothing without the love of the woman he has fallen for, Megadeth not only want to warn of the relationship between man and weaponry has tipped massively in favour of the bombs and missiles that are in every bunker but that the weapons now are primed and sourced. Ultimately, Humankind is doomed.
The final two lines of the song sum up perfectly this premise as Dave Mustaine’s growling and unyielding voice voices the concerns of one of the most intelligent people of the 20th Century, Albert Einstein, as he sings, “We’ll use rocks on the other side.” War between nations, between ideologies, between friends is unceasing and brutal; there are no survivors in the end to set the world afire.
The song would also have unnerving parallels with a song from the Metallica album …And Justice For All. which would come out later in the year. Both albums had the destruction of Earth due to nuclear weaponry as a core track, Metallica’s Blackened may have been more rich and musically developed but there was no disguising Megadeth’s Set The World Afire was more in keeping with the absolute horror of the ultimate war scenario.
The coup de grace of So Far, So Good, So What! is in their cover version of the Sex Pistols classic Anarchy In The U.K. It is brutal and enduring and as the song plays out the rage and disgust is more palpable and more terrifying than four men from Britain managed to make it. With the four men channelling and challenging the work of Glen Matlock, Johnny Rotten, Paul Cook and Steve Jones, the sound becomes rawer, more visceral in the snarling rhetoric of Dave Mustaine. The language becomes course and when the two versions are played side by side, Megadeth has the sound of a cornered wild beast about to strike out with a mouthful of obscenity and dire tribes, whereas the great late 1970s music revolution in Britain now seems to just the talk of a man who has just got out of bed the wrong side in the morning.
Although the Sex Pistols version is rightly the classic, the more discerning one to rage against the establishment with, certainly in the U.K., it doesn’t quite have the anger that Megadeth inflict upon their listeners.
As an antidote to Anarchy In The U.K. the album touches on a rare moment of genuine sentimentality from the band. Dave Mustaine’s wonderful lyrics of In My Darkest Hour were written in one sitting and after Dave had heard that Metallica’s Cliff Burton had died in Sweden when the tour bus Metallica were on was involved in an accident.
Although the song is not written with Cliff in mind, the lyrics are stunning, beautiful in a Thrash Metal kind of way and obviously heartfelt. The themes of desertion and death are never that far away from the listeners mind as in each line there is an element of the pain that Dave Mustaine may have been feeling. Many years of repression and anger come flowing out of the lyrics and the pleading and assertive awareness on lines such as, “Things will be better when I’m dead and gone, don’t try to understand, knowing you I’m probably wrong.” This line shows that the protagonist of the song is trying to justify his actions to the one person he leaves behind but is demanding that they pay no heed to what he has done or try to comprehend as they will no doubt have the last word and in the end his action would have been wrong. This line doesn’t not have to be about suicide and its aftermath as the ground between Megadeth and Metallica was fertile enough, let alone that Dave Mustaine had been in Metallica before founding his own group, it can be seen as the non-talked about ‘ musical divorce’ between Lars Ulrich and Mustaine was finally bearing fruit.
Although not a masterpiece in comparison to the likes of Rust in Peace or Countdown To Destruction, Megadeth’s So Far, So Good, So What! is nonetheless an important and edifying album in the group’s cannon and although it hasn’t dated well still is a cracking recording.
Ian D. Hall