David Ellefson, former bassist for Megadeth, has once again spoken out in defense of the band’s 1999 album, Risk. The record, which marked a notable shift from their thrash metal sound towards a more commercial, pop-rock style, often divided critics and fans. Despite this, Risk debuted at No. 16 on the Billboard chart and later achieved gold certification in the U.S. for selling half a million copies. Ellefson maintains that the album served as a crucial entry point for many new fans into Megadeth‘s catalog.
In a recent conversation with Mark Jackson and Jason Gardner on The Metal Forge podcast, Ellefson offered his perspective on the album’s controversial nature.
“The Risk album is probably the most controversial album in the catalog,” Ellefson explained (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “And admittedly, we did not sort of deliver a record that probably we even wanted to because we kind of took for granted, like, ‘Well, we’ll write the heavy metal tunes when we get down to Nashville.’ And then, of course, what happened is we got so involved in the task of writing the other songs for the album that we didn’t have any time to really play the metal tunes. And it’s interesting because going through that process, it sort of takes you away from being a metal band. With [Megadeth‘s 1997 album] Cryptic Writings, it worked because we were very much a metal band writing these, say, four songs — ‘Trust‘, ‘Almost Honest‘, ‘Use The Man‘, ‘A Secret Place‘, for example; those were the four singles — that were gonna be deliberately aimed at the active rock, American FM radio, because metal was changing, music was changing.”
Ellefson elaborated on the band’s decision to explore a more commercial sound with Risk, framing it as a response to evolving market trends.
“Look, if you’re in any line of work, whether you’re Starbucks or you’re Megadeth or you’re Chevrolet or whoever you are, you have to be aware of market trends, market changes and be able to adapt to what’s going on or else you’re out of business. So we played the game on Cryptic Writings and we hit the bullseye and we won. With Risk, we played the game, but there was other… The music was actually getting heavier, as a friend pointed out… As we were going lighter, Disturbed and Godsmack and Rob Zombie and this heavier kind of modern rock, nu metal sound was coming out. Korn was kind of the new Metallica for the nu metal; I call ’em the Metallica of the nu metal movement.”
He then compared Megadeth‘s approach to that of their contemporaries during the rise of grunge and nu metal in the 1990s.
“Look. Slayer didn’t change. Testament didn’t change. I’ll say this: Anthrax, kind of, I guess being forced a bit, ’cause they had a singer change, but John Bush packs a punch, man. I mean, when that guy sings, you listen, ’cause he’s just such a great singer. And so he sort of gave them a jumpstart and a restart in the ’90s just by having that one member change. And when it’s the singer, it matters especially, because it’s kind of the main thing [you hear in a band’s music]. So they also went through it. Out of the ‘Big Four’ [of 1980s thrash metal], Slayer didn’t really play the game, [while] Anthrax, Megadeth and Metallica did. And then, finally, by the time we got into the 2000s, it was, like, ‘Oh, thank God that decade’s over.’ And look, I’m not complaining about the ’90s. Megadeth, that was our biggest decade. We were very prolific. We had our most successful, and to this day, probably some of our most applauded work with that lineup.”
Ellefson believes Risk remains an underrated album precisely because it introduced the band to a new generation of fans. He drew a parallel to his own experience with Kiss‘s Destroyer.
“Look, it was what it was. I remember, and I’ve told this story before, one day a fan hit me, and they said, ‘Why do you guys sort of talk down against Risk?’ They said, ‘I was really young and that was my very first Megadeth album I ever bought. I fell in love with it and I bought every other album since.’ And I thought, ‘You know what, man?’ I came into Kiss at Destroyer. Now I’ve talked to some people recently, they went, ‘Oh, ‘Destroyer‘.’ That was like their Risk, you know what I mean? ‘Oh, I couldn’t take Kiss anymore after that,’ because they bought Hotter Than Hell and Dressed To Kill. But I thought about it. I thought, whatever age we’re born, we have no say in that. So whatever’s kind of coming across our plate, culturally, musically, artistically, that’s where we are at that time. And like this fan said, they bought Risk and then they went and bought every other Megadeth album afterwards, just like I bought Destroyer, and then I bought Kiss‘ Alive!, and then I bought Dressed To Kill and Hotter Than Hell… But it was Destroyer that got me in the game. And so I thought the same thing is true. It’s, like, people like things for different reasons. And some people don’t like things for different reasons, and whatever. It’s power of choice. It’s what the good Lord made us. So, you’re not gonna please everybody all the time, and we’re not in that business, to be honest with you. Our businesses is to create and make things that we like, and hopefully there’s just enough other sort of black-t-shirt knuckleheads like us who actually are gonna like it too. And then, once the first record comes out, the die is cast. And then from then, it is a bit of a chess game how you traverse the rest of the years of your career because it would be sad if we just made ‘Killing Is My Business‘ 15 more times. It’s, like, what person does that? You grow, you experience new things and your music reflects that.”
