David Ellefson Says Megadeth ‘Lost The Plot’ During ‘Risk’ Era

Former Megadeth bassist David Ellefson has offered a frank retrospective on the band’s controversial stylistic shift in the late 1990s, admitting that the thrash legends eventually “lost the plot” in their pursuit of radio viability.

During a recent appearance on the “100 Songs That Define Heavy Metal” podcast, hosted by Metal Blade Records CEO Brian Slagel, Ellefson discussed the immense pressure hard rock bands faced during the grunge explosion of the early 90s. For Megadeth, survival meant adapting their sound to fit a changing landscape—a strategy Ellefson referred to as “playing the game.”

“Look, we played the game. Because it’s a game. When you’re in showbiz, it’s a game. And so you play the game,” Ellefson explained (as transcribed by Blabbermouth). “And, look, part of it is your self-interest. Do you wanna survive or not? You wanna be back out on the road again, paying your mortgage next year? Well, then we gotta play the game. Sometimes you do get a little beholden to the golden handcuffs of the paycheck.”

He added that ultimately, the audience dictates the longevity of a band. “Just like in any business — it’s like anybody going to work. Do what the boss says. Well, sometimes the boss in music isn’t anyone in the band; the boss is the public. In fact, they’re always the boss, quite honestly.”

Unlike many of his peers who viewed the Seattle sound as the enemy, Ellefson revealed he held a nuanced view of the grunge movement. He noted that the musicians in those bands were often admirers of the thrash scene they were inadvertently displacing.

“[Journalist] Greg Prato… pointed out too that, as you said, grunge kind of killed hair metal. [But] those guys [in all those bands] were fans of what we were doing. They were Slayer, Metallica, Megadeth fans. They were not against what thrash metal was. So I’ve always stood up for grunge, ’cause I liked a lot of it. A lot of the Nirvana stuff, it’s punky and I think it’s cool, man.”

However, Ellefson pinpointed the moment where Megadeth‘s adaptation went too far. While he defended 1997’s Cryptic Writings as a successful balance of authenticity and evolution, he confessed that the follow-up, 1999’s Risk, was a miscalculation driven by management changes and a misunderstanding of the market.

“That’s why I think for us, by the time we got to the Risk album [in 1999], we had different management at that point and we lost the plot — we did,” Ellefson admitted. “And we took it as far as we could go as far as being sort of a melodic radio rock band.”

He contrasted the two albums sharply. “I think Cryptic Writings… we completely hit the mark. That was a very successful record… musically you can hear there’s a great spirit in it, you can hear it’s authentic.”

By comparison, Risk failed because the band moved toward pop sensibilities just as the rest of the metal world was becoming more aggressive again.

“[With] Risk, as our friend [former Megadeth manager] Larry Mazer said, we zigged and the rest of the world zagged,” Ellefson concluded. “We went lighter and the rest of sort of the modern rock, modern metal regime went harder and heavier. And it took a few years to correct the ship and right the course from that one.”