Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The Sick, The Dying…and the Dead, perhaps for the first time this century we are acutely aware of how we have let down those who need us most, those innocents to whom we have stepped over in the name of progress, in the name of war, of so-called liberation, in the name of many gods.
Human memory is short, we forget because we have to, because we must survive as a species, we know of, we might even understand events such as the fear and panic behind The Black Death, the absurdity of World War One, and incidents of mass slaughter by nature, by a human hand, but we cannot truly say we feel them in our soul; we can all stand at the cenotaph and bow our heads, but unless we have lived through it ourselves first hand, we cannot feel what those others have felt…not without a push on our inner emotions from an external force.
Such is the depth of force that Megadeth display in their song writing that it has been possible across their long history to feel the emotion of the tale being discussed by the various members of the band in every stage, not for nothing did they receive the prestigious Doris Day Music Award (part of the Genesis Awards) in 1993 for Countdown To Extinction, not for nothing did Holy Wars…The Punishment Due cause outrage in certain countries, for whatever you may think of the band, of Dave Mustaine, their voice has perhaps captured and framed a generation’s thoughts in how our truth is shaped by the past; and whether in Risk, Peace Sells, or Rust In Peace, they harness emotions that place time completely in our hands.
The Sick, The Dying…and the Dead is no different, just harder, angrier, and more complex than any album arguably since Youthanasia.
The album is complex because of history within the band, and whilst it could have destroyed the flow, what comes through, with Kirk Loueiro and Dirk Verbeuren handling their duties with honour and an ocean of pleasure, is a caress, a deep embrace from one of the behemoths of the last forty years that the listener can do noth9ng else but hold close to the heart and defend to their final breath.
Across tracks such as Night Stalkers, which features Ice-T, the prescient Dogs Of Chernobyl, Psychopathy, Killing Time, Sacrifice, and We’ll Be Back, Megadeth punish the silence of those who protect the vile, the evil, and those willing to inflict damage on the good and generous.
Megadeth have always been a group that will set out to inform as well as entertain, and despite those that suggest with mealy mouths that their genre is incapable of showing feelings that frame the decency of humankind at its best, continue to bring and call attention to the world and its problems with praise befitting the glory that is the soul of those forgotten, and those who continue to breathe.
Ian D. Hall