The bassist says the band’s calendar is already sketched out for next year, built by five musicians who have all seen what the alternative does to people.
David Ellefson has spent enough time on tour buses to know what he does not want to do again.
The former Megadeth bassist, now part of Metal Church, told Stefan Nilsson of “Roppongi Rocks” that the band have already mapped out 2027 and that the planning is deliberate rather than opportunistic.
“2027 is already pretty well booked — at least the calendar is framed. Plus, now we’re excited about new material in the works. We’re not out here writing songs. We’re enjoying the new album. We’re enjoying just being present with it. But knowing — we’ve all been in bands and we know how tour cycles go, and you reach this sort of plateau at a certain point down the road, and you kind of go, ‘Man, let’s get in and do some new songs. Let’s get that going.’ So we’re careful with the calendar in the way that it isn’t just, ‘Let’s just get on a bus and just tour until we fall over.’ We’ve done all those tours. So now it’s about, okay, the old ‘tour smarter, not harder,’ so that, first of all, everybody still enjoys it,” he said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth).
Ellefson said the lesson came partly from his bandmate Kurdt Vanderhoof, who told him what happened after Metal Church came off the road in the mid-eighties.
“Kurdt was the first guy years ago, I remember, and he told me the story after [Metal Church] were out with Metallica on the Master Of Puppets tour. [Metal Church] were on Elektra,” Ellefson continued. “They did all this touring, as we all did, and he came home and he was broke. He had no money. And I think he went to work as a waiter. I remember hearing this, like in ’86, ’87. We were, like, ‘Wow, Kurdt Vanderhoof.’ It was, like, ‘How can he not do this?’ And I asked him about it, and he goes, ‘Dude, I just came home. We had no money.’ He said, ‘It was just a survival thing. I had to take other day jobs.’ So, again, realities of big rock bands, even on major labels, which is why a lot of people start tribute bands. They make more money in tribute bands than they ever did being in their own band signed to a major label. I hear it from a lot of people, finding different paths forward.”
Metal Church had signed to Elektra and released their self-titled debut and The Dark as the American metal wave crested, and toured with Metallica as labelmates.
The five members are all long past the stage of taking whatever is offered, and Ellefson argued that the industry’s biggest acts have arrived at the same conclusion.
“So, we all had the experience, all of us, because of our age. We’ve been in the rodeo now for a while. So we know where the sweet spot and the joy and the fun of it is. We also know when you can reach a point of exhaustion, boredom — you can hit walls along the way. And so because we know this going into it — we’re not kids and young, [with] those young ambitions — we can set this up better. And you look around, everybody from Styx and even Metallica are weekend warriors again. It’s funny — we start out playing on the weekends ’cause we got schools and day jobs, and hopefully you end as a weekend warrior. Now they play stadiums on the weekend. I have friends in Germany — Böhse Onkelz and Die Toten Hosen — these guys are playing stadiums, and they play on the weekends. So, a stadium weekend warrior,” he explained.
He was equally direct that this is a business as well as a pleasure: “There’s a lot of other ways to continue this, to make it fun. It’s gotta be profitable because there’s bills to pay, and nothing gets cheaper in life. So there’s realities about it. So to do it in ways that you enjoy the friendship, you enjoy the music, the fans are excited about it, and you keep it fresh for them as well.”
Metal Church announced the current formation in November 2025, roughly two years after cancelling their 2024 dates because of a back problem affecting Kurdt Vanderhoof. Three of the five positions changed at once: Brian Allen of Vicious Rumors came in on vocals in place of Marc Lopes, Ellefson replaced Steve Unger on bass, and Ken Mary took over from Stet Howland on drums. Vanderhoof and longtime guitarist Rick Van Zandt remained.
Mary has previously played with Flotsam And Jetsam, Fifth Angel, Alice Cooper, House Of Lords, TKO and Chastain. The vocal position has changed hands repeatedly across the band’s history, taking in David Wayne, Mike Howe, who sang on Blessing In Disguise and The Human Factor and died in 2021, and Ronny Munroe.
Dead To Rights, the band’s thirteenth studio album and the first with this lineup, came out on April 10 through Rat Pak Records in America, Reaper in Europe and the UK and Rubicon in Japan. Vanderhoof produced it, and Chris “Zeuss” Harris mixed and mastered it at Planet Z. It was preceded by the singles “F.A.F.O.” in November 2025 and “Brainwash Game” in February.
The new lineup played its first show on May 17 at San Luis Metal Fest at Teatro del Pueblo in San Luis Potosí, Mexico.
Their remaining 2026 work is “The Metal Saint Tour 2026“, a sixteen-date North American co-headlining run with Armored Saint, who are out behind their own new album Emotion Factory Reset. It opens on November 2 at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, California and finishes on November 21 in Agoura Hills, with Livekill opening every night.
