Dave Mustaine and Megadeth are busy, busy, busy right now. The band is hard at work on their 16th studio album, hoping to release it next year.
They better hope to be done soon because it looks like their schedule for 2019 is already packed. The band had just announced Megacruise, a cruise vacation with them as the headliners "thrashing through the Pacific Ocean." In a new interview with Full Metal Jackie, Dave Mustaine revealed the first bits of info about the cruise:
We have thought about when we do festivals, how do you bring the audience in to have fun? Well, we don't really want anybody up onstage, but we would love to be able to have something backstage. You know, something where you can have people associate with the band, maybe play some songs, get some direct information from us, some feedback on their playing and stuff. And, we thought, you know, what would be a great way to do that? Well, a cruise would be a great way and we're doing the first ever West Coast cruise on next year with Norwegian [Cruise Line].
We're going to have… it's going to start in Long Beach and we're gonna cruise out to Catalina and then go down to Mexico and turn around, head back up to San Diego and I think we're going to stop in San Diego. We may return up to Long Beach, but I think San Diego's gonna be where the cruise is gonna end for us.
We've got a lot of really great bands that we've planned. One I'm super excited about is Armored Saint. I've always been a fan of Armored Saint. I like the Sandoval brothers and love Joey [Vera] so, I think it's going to be fun and that's what we wanted. We wanted something that you know, people would stop thinking about, how do we have the most successful this and how do we make the most money that. Well, how about you treat the fans with dignity and respect and you give them their money's worth, you know?
It sounds like a pretty immersive cruise. By the sound of it, there would be at least two, possibly three stops – meaning this is more likely to be a five day cruise than a four day cruise. It also sounds like the final details are still being ironed out, so take what Dave is saying with a grain of salt.
Turns out this is not going to be the only Megadeth-branded festival in 2019, as Dave Mustaine snuck in the announcement of a new Megadeth-themed festival called KEG-A-DEATH. He also claims the band is finishing their record up and will put the final touches on it in the first quarter of 2019:
So, If I went chronologically down the list of everything that's going on right now, we're working on wrapping up the music, I'm working on a new band that Thrashville manages called Down to Ride. We're working on their music and they're still trying to decide if that's the name they're going to use or not and we are working on the Megacruise, we're working on Kegadeth, which is a metal music and craft beer festival that we created based around the new beer.
Then next year we hope to have a record out. This October 27th we'll be headlining Jakarta – were taking the holidays off and we'll be working on the new record next year. We start around March, I'm going to be doing a very special experience where I'm going to be going out for a month and playing some concerts.
So after Kegadeth we have something also next year, of course, we have the experience starting in March – and after that we do a month worth of kegadeth and then we've got some dates in the Summer, and then in the Fall again we're going to do a camping plan with the Kegadeth festival and then more Kegadeth dates.
Then obviously a Megadeth tour to support record number 16. And I use my social media stuff to help explain what's going on with us and we're really super excited about this next year with everything that is going on with the new record. I gotta tell you, Jackie, I feel so confident about the band – the lineup – the way the guys are playing. I've known Junior [aka bassist Dave Ellefson] forever and he is playing better than he ever has.
Kegadeth seems more in line with the festival idea that Mustaine was talking about last year as the successor to Gigantour. It will be very interesting to see how they pull it off.
