Dave Mustaine has proven time and time again that he’s one of the greatest guitarists in metal history. Every Megadeth album since the beginning has featured at least a handful of totally mind-blowing guitar passages, but the thrash pioneer has never been lauded for his voice. While there’re many people who appreciate his uniquely nasally, high-pitched singing style, there’re many people who view his voice as a barrier to entering the land of Megadeth fandom.
Mustaine isn’t unaware of this fact, and in a new interview with Streetwater about Megadeth’s new album The Sick, The Dying… and the Dead!, Mustaine outright said that he wasn’t “born to sing” — and that there’re probably many others who’d agree with that.
“I like to take my approach to writing as organic as possible so that I know what the melody is,” Mustaine said, as transcribed by Blabbermouth. “And it makes it a lot easier for me to sing something over it because I’m not a … I wasn’t born to sing. I believe I was born to play guitar, but I don’t think I was born to sing. And there’s a lot of people out there that would say, ‘we agree.’ [Laughs]”
From there, the interviewer mentions that Mustaine’s voice is “instantly recognizable and identifiable,” to which the guitarist-vocalist agrees.
“Yeah. It works for me, I think. The funny thing is before I got [throat] cancer [in 2019], I was having a lot of problems with my voice. And then the cancer came, and I got treatment, and I got healed, and then I had to kind of learn how to sing again, which has been bizarre, because it’s like learning how to talk again.”
The man knows his strengths — which is still being able to play almost any fellow shredder under the table. See the full interview with Streetwater below.