In a recent interview with Oran O’Beirne of Overdrive.ie, David Ellefson stood up for Megadeth’s most disliked album, ‘Risk.’
“I think with ‘Risk,’ with Megadeth, we wrote that record mostly at rehearsal, then we went to Nashville and finished it in the studio and it didn’t have time to simmer and percolate and really kind of sink into us,” the bassist shared.
He continued, “Here’s what I found: if you’re not a fan of your music first, it’s hard to convince someone else to be. And that album just didn’t — and now I listen back to it, and it still remains one of the great Megadeth records, even though it doesn’t sound like a Megadeth record of the past, leading up to that point.”
“But we didn’t have enough time to let it just kind of absorb into us,” Ellefson added. “And then next thing you know, we’re right on the road playing these songs and it’s, like, ‘Oh, sh*t. These songs aren’t really connecting so much.’ To just have the time, to let the stuff, to let the material absorb…”
Released in 1999, ‘Risk’ got mixed reviews from critics and upset many fans because it moved away from the band’s heavy thrash metal style to a more commercial pop-rock sound. The album debuted at Number 16 on the Billboard chart and later sold half a million copies in the U.S.
“Thus the backlash with ‘Risk,’ because people expected that speed and thrashy kind of stuff,” Dave Mustaine also noted about the record before. “If that record would have been called the Dave Mustaine Project, people would have loved it. But because it said Megadeth, they expected Megadeth. And that was my mistake; I should have called it a solo record. But I had the band guys on there, which would have been totally disrespectful to do that.”
Despite the backlash, ‘Risk’ received a gold certification in the United States. The album’s lead single, ‘Crush ‘Em,’ was featured in the movie ‘Universal Soldier: The Return’ and was also used as an entrance theme for NHL hockey games and wrestling events.