Megadeth: Countdown to Extinction (2LP, remastered) [CAPITOL]

Why you'll love it

This remastered 2LP set spreads the album over four sides, with an insert reproducing the original printed inner sleeve. It entered the Billboard 200 at No. 2 and went double platinum, the band's biggest seller.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Remastered
• Printed insert with lyrics

About the album

Megadeth spent the 1980s playing faster than nearly everybody. On this record they decided to play tighter instead. It was the second album from the classic lineup of Dave Mustaine, Marty Friedman, David Ellefson and Nick Menza, and for the first time all four had a hand in the songwriting.

Producer Max Norman brought plenty of ideas, and he and Menza mapped every tempo to a computer click track so the drums landed with both feel and precision. They recorded in the first half of 1992, when the Los Angeles curfew sent them out of the studio at six every evening. What came out is lean and hooky: "Symphony of Destruction" stomps, "Sweating Bullets" leers, "Skin o' My Teeth" charges in, and "Foreclosure of a Dream" and "Ashes in Your Mouth" show off Friedman's melodic lead work.

It earned a Grammy nomination for Best Metal Performance, and the title track picked up the Humane Society's Genesis Award for raising awareness of animal rights. As far as we can tell that makes it the heaviest record ever honoured by an animal welfare charity, a shelf with plenty of room on it.

Also at Kops: more Megadeth on vinyl · browse Metal

Tracklist

Listen

On Capitol, a reissue of the 1992 album.