MEGADETH spent Thursday evening on a roof in downtown Los Angeles, which is not a sentence anyone expected to write about a thrash metal band in 2026, and it worked anyway.
The band took part in a discussion and performance at the Grammy Museum's Ray Charles Rooftop Terrace on September 24, talking to MTV alum Matt Pinfield about their seventeenth studio album, their creative process and a career now in its fifth decade. Attendees got the rooftop views, a café and a cash bar before the programme started. The evening sold out; tickets were not on general sale, and the only way in for most people was a sweepstakes attached to the band's Prince St. Pizza collaboration, which closed the night before.
The set was seven songs, and it did the job a room that size demands — open with the new record, finish with the two everyone came for.
MEGADETH setlist, Grammy Museum, September 24:
- Tipping Point
- I Don't Care
- Let There Be Shred
- Sweating Bullets
- Symphony Of Destruction
- Peace Sells
- Holy Wars... The Punishment Due
The self-titled seventeenth album is the reason for the conversation. It debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 — the first MEGADETH record ever to do so, after more than forty years of near misses, including "Countdown To Extinction" stalling at No. 2 in 1992. The band that followed "Dystopia" and its Best Metal Performance Grammy with "The Sick, The Dying... And The Dead!" finally got the top line on the chart with the album carrying their own name.
The back catalogue behind it needs no introduction here: the platinum "Peace Sells... But Who's Buying?", ranked No. 8 on Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Metal Albums Of All Time" and now forty years old; the platinum "Rust In Peace"; the double-platinum "Countdown To Extinction". Fifty million albums sold, one Grammy and twelve further nominations.
MEGADETH are currently out on the sold-out "Run For Your Lives" stadium tour with IRON MAIDEN — which makes a rooftop terrace with a cash bar the smallest room Dave Mustaine, Teemu Mäntysaari, James LoMenzo and Dirk Verbeuren are likely to play all year.