Megadeth’s Tipping Point: An Uneven Ride of Metal Thrills and Shaking my Head

The genesis of Megadeth was the moment a bus ticket hit Dave Mustaine’s hand and Metallica told him to hit the road. He decided to get revenge through metal and became a part of thrash metal history since 1983. Well, they are still at it! Megadeth’s new record Megadeth…interesting that it took 40 years to get to using Megadeth as a title…is reported to be their last. The question is, do they go out on a thrash riff…or a broken string.

The answer is somewhere in the middle, but we will get to that. Lyrically this is what you expect from thrash metal. Dave peppers the song with references to darkness, blood and death. The track itself seems to be about the joy of abusing or torturing someone….Dave….need a hug buddy??? A kind reading would be that Mustaine is playing out his vengeance against all his haters in his final record. A less kind reading…being my reading…is that Dave is trying to shock using tired metal tropes from the 80s. Metal has elevated and evolved, but Dave seems to be stuck in 1983. Moreover, his vocal on this track does nothing for me. It isn’t high enough to give you those killer thrash vocals from yesteryear, but it also isn’t deep enough to play into the darkness…it’s just sort of there.

Where the song lyrically and vocally fails, the instrumentation is a trash masterclass. High octane thrash guitar and percussion just melt the speakers and is pure joy to listen to, while Mustaine’s lead guitar is a technical marvel. Where Mustaine fails on the lyrics/vocal, he blows the doors off with his guitar. One other interesting fact about Mustaine is that he is the only consistent/original member left in Megadeth. However, the band sounds super tight and fantastic.

So, what is the verdict on Tipping Point? That’s complicated. On the one hand it has the lyrical depth of reading the back of a Frosted Flakes box, but the metal is fire and propulsive. I think where I land is that I will definitely listen to it for the guitar…but I wish it was an instrumental.

Listen to Tipping Point