Megadeth's 2016 album Dystopia was the first and only Megadeth album to feature Lamb Of God drummer Chris Adler. Adler did a little playing live with Megadeth after that, but never officially joined the band due to his commitments to Lamb Of God. Megadeth would go on to hire now ex-Soilwork drummer Dirk Verbeuren, which bassist Dave Ellefson says was Adler's recommendation.
In an interview with Spazio Rock, Ellefson says he and Adler were good friends before he joined, but ultimately Lamb Of God took precedence over Adler's schedule.
"Chris Adler said 'If you guys need help with the new record I'd be glad to help! I'm the biggest Megadeth fan.' So he was always brought in to just cut the record. He was in Lamb of God, which is doing wonderful on its own.
"And Chris is wonderful, he's been a good friend of mine and Megadeth for many years, and we had a lot of fun together. Then we did one show together in July 2015 up in Canada. Just a one-off show and it was a really big festival. We didn't really know what the next transition was to have a drummer of Megadeth.
"There was a discussion that at one point Lamb of God was gonna be taking some time off. Maybe Chris would be able to continue to do a lot of the touring with us. But Lamb of God is a popular band and they had a lot of touring that ended up coming to their schedule in 2016. He always said 'If I had a guy to replace me on a gig I would recommend Dirk. It was kind of Chris' referral for Dirk.
"Last summer we had all these festivals going on and it was just a time to make a transition. Chris is still a dear friend of ours. We made 'Dystopia' with him. It's an awesome moment of music we made together. It's nice that in the heavy metal community we're nice to each other and that we're friends."
Adler also once suggested Megadeth hire Allegaeon guitarist Greg Burgess. It's cool to know that Adler is not only paying attention to who's incredibly talented within metal, but also trying to get them into better positions within the genre!
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fX6fPiG_sbw[/youtube]
[via Ultimate Guitar]
