Encryption
After the extensive tours which followed up Youthanasia, the band took
a while off. Dave got to spend a lot of time with his son, Justis, and
Jr went and had two kids of his own. 
Dave worked with a side project
during some of this time; first called Mastermind, then the Beverley
Killbillies, and then MD:45 ( MD from [ Mustaine, Dave ], and 45 as the
roman numeral equivalent of [ Ving, Lee ], the vocalist ). Also in the
band were Kelly Lemieux for a bassist and Jimmy Degrasso on drums. Dave did very little vocal work on the album. Of the
other members of the band, the only other one with much to talk about is
Ving, who used to be in the band Fear, and played the part of a biker gang
leader in the movie Dudes and Mr. Body in the movie Clue. Nick also started a side project, Soma (
the origons of that name I don't know ), but they have not released anything
yet. After this, the band went to Nashville, Tennessee to start working on
their next album. Why Nashville/why not Arizona? Probably because the producer,
Dann Huff, lived in the area. Why not Max Norman produce? The band wanted to get a bit of variety
in after using Max for production of two albums and mixing of another. The recording
process was much the same for the album as it had been for Youthanasia;
no obscession with making everything perfect. It was to be called 'Needles and
Pins,' referring to voodoo ( voodoo dolls, to be exact ). It went as Needles and Pins for about a month or
so, until the band saw the cover art. It was supposed
to be of a naked woman ( backlit to aviod being pornography )
holding a voodoo doll out towards the front of the picture. The voodoo doll
was to have rusty nails and pins in it; possibly some syringes and possibly
Vic on the heads of some of the nails. But it came out looking really dumb (
'the voodoo doll looked like a chicken leg,' Dave says ) so not only the cover
idea but the whole album name was scrapped. A new title was thought of to replace
it, and this one stayed. Finally, a release date was set for the album which seemed
a bit excessive ( four or so months for mixing and editing??? ) but June 17th it was. The
CyberArmy, Megadeth's on-line fan club, set up a promotional trip to see the band preform the first show of the tours
to support the album, which was to be on June 13th, and was to be broadcasted by hundreds of
radio stations around the world. On June 17th, the album will be out. A single for
Trust MAY be on the way, but for some reason, it might not happen.
beadil@trend1.com jsimmons@compassnet.com
