In a recent interview with Meltdown, Megadeth guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari talked about the progress of the songwriting sessions. He shared his riff ideas and admitted that he still needs the approval of the frontman Dave Mustaine.
“Now I have a bunch of riffs and ideas that I’ve gathered,” the guitarist explained. “And then Dave told me that he likes to work the way that everybody does their riffs and then at some point we’re gonna get together and then review things and see which riffs are gonna work together and then work out the parts between the riffs to kind of connect things and then that way come up with the skeletons for the songs. And I’m really looking forward to doing that and hearing how he feels about my ideas as well.”
“But what I’ve done so far is whenever I have a moment to sit down, I usually just record a little video of myself playing a riff idea and then when we have a day off at the hotel, then I would record that properly and then just like have this folder of riffs that we can look into at some point. So, [I’m] really looking forward to that. And Dave has been really supportive and sounds like he wants to have all the guys’ input on the next album, which is really exciting,” he added.
Mäntysaari stepped in for Kiko Loureiro in September 2023 after Loureiro announced he would sit out the next leg of Megadeth’s ‘Crush The World’ tour to spend time with his kids in Finland. It was later confirmed that the musician would be playing guitar for Megadeth for the foreseeable future, while Loureiro didn’t appear to have plans to come back.
“[We’d] look at the small details of how they groove, the moods, and the technical side. We talked a lot about what Dave wants to project, picking directions, being very aware of down-picking, alternate picking, and, in many of the songs, being aware of both,” Mäntysaari said in another interview while chatting about replacing the former guitarist.
“We also talked about things like dampening, the flow of songs, creating contrast, hand positions, and trying to get things right fingering-wise, all of which I enjoy doing. There’s a bit of detective work involved, and to get that information from the source in Dave was amazing,” he added.
Now that the band is complete, it appears that we might hear new music soon. “Yeah, that’s actually the plan,” Mäntysaari told John The Metal Mailman when asked about working on new music. “Right now everybody’s gathering their own riff ideas, and then, at some point, we’re gonna put them together and probably record in Nashville. And the plan is to get the next album done next year.”
Megadeth’s latest album, ‘The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead!,’ was released on September 2, 2022. The next record will be Mäntysaari’s first with Megadeth after officially joining the band in November 2022.