When I was first getting into metal music, it didn’t take long for me to figure out the general consensuses of people much more experienced than I was in music criticism on the qualities of different albums by metal and rock bands- which ones were considered good, great, masterpieces, awful, terrible etc.
One of the albums that was always hammered in as being one of the worst albums in rock and metal ever made was Metallica’s St. Anger. I’ve argued for years to the contrary saying that the album really wasn’t worth the type of hype that it was getting for how bad it was. Usually St. Anger was brought up in arguments between Metallica and Megadeth fans when arguing over which album was better and it had me wondering if there was an equally ‘bad’ album that Megadeth had put out.
It took more searching but I did end up discovering that the popular consensus was that Megadeth’s 1999 studio effort, ‘Risk’ was considered to be their worst album ever. Surprisingly enough, however, I noticed that most of the people who talked about the album talked about it mostly in passing. They seldom directly addressed it and on the off chance they would, it would be and off-hand comment or treated as the subject of a tangential point that wasn’t worth getting in to. The most I heard about it was with some of the more underground YouTube music reviewers talking about how it was too much pop and too much rock and while it wasn’t good it wasn’t terrible either.
Because of all of this, ‘Risk’ became this mysterious, almost legendary, artifact. It was forbidden, and so much so, nobody wanted to talk about it. It was almost like an unspoken rule to not to bother going too much into it. At some point, after going through the metal slump and properly visiting the entire Megadeth discography, I finally got to ‘Risk.’ ‘Risk’ with its strange orange-ish cover and non-Megadeth-font Megadeth logo on it- it was kind of weird. Finally opening my mind to anything this album might have to offer, I played it.
When it finished, I was really surprised. All of that mystery and intrigue for what? Megadeth pretty much remade ‘Cryptic Writings’ (an acclaimed album) and explored a slightly more radio-accessible sound with SOME of the songs on it than what was on ‘Cryptic Writings.’ And that wasn’t all, I actually found myself preferring this album to many other Megadeth albums including ‘Cryptic Writings’ and… dare I even say it… ‘Rust in Peace.’
‘Risk’ is a pop album? In what world? This was before I jumped into the world of Japanese pop music- long before that- and I could not see where this album fell off the wagon. Enter the Arena was unnecessary, but so was the penultimate track off of ‘The System has Failed’ and that album is celebrated by many who have explored Megadeth’s deeper cuts. Is it because of Breadline? What exactly makes that song bad? I’ll go deeper into my analysis of the album later but I’ve never heard anyone explain what makes songs off of ‘Risk’ bad other than just saying they are.
When I first got into metal, I mostly listened, almost exclusively, to Metallica and select songs by bands that they cited as influences. Metallica and Megadeth, I soon found after properly delving into Megadeth’s catalog, are fundamentally different bands in their composition style. Metallica had a fatter guitar tone that was more conducive to a more rhythm-oriented composition style due to it having a more percussive sound. I actually concluded that Metallica were the heavier between the two up until Megadeth released their 2009 album ‘Endgame’ where Megadeth’s sound completely changed. Before that, Megadeth weren’t really all that heavy a band. Their sound was much thinner and that was more conducive to a faster, and more technical style of songwriting. I found later on, even when revisiting their thrash-era albums from the 80s, they had a larger emphasis on melody than Metallica did. The melodic contours of the songs were much more dynamic than what Metallica offered and the harmonic structure of Megadeth’s songs was always deceptively more elaborate which gave a greater depth of color in their songs overall. While Metallica were writing 8–10 minute marathon, progressive thrash songs that focused heavily on rhythmic experimentation, Megadeth were expanding on the more tonal side of the genre.
Megadeth were always a more melodically-driven band, even before the introduction of Marty Friedman and, later, Bud Prager. Because of this shtick that Megadeth had cultivated for themselves, when it came time to try slowing down for a more alternative edge in the 90s, the melodic edge of Megadeth was really allowed to flourish and come to the forefront. As a result, ‘Risk’ was less of a big risk-taking measure Megadeth did, and more took the melodic nature of Megadeth to its logical conclusion. Honestly, the album sounds more like an expansion of ‘Cryptic Writings’ than something akin to making a straight-up pop album like many would have you believe.
What’s more, albums like ‘Cryptic Writings’ and ‘The World Needs a Hero’ receive fairly generous appraisals even though ‘Risk’ only expanded on what was already done in ‘Cryptic Writings’ and ‘The World Needs a Hero’ still employed a lot of the things that were present on ‘Risk.’ And yet it’s easier to say that Risk is bad because it doesn’t sound like a “Megadeth album” and that it’s okay to pretend that it doesn’t exist because Dave Mustaine, himself, says the album was a mistake and was only made to appease Marty Friedman and/or it was Bud Prager’s fault for ruining the Megadeth sound and trying to make it pop… or… well, that’s the other thing.
Dave has put out a litany of reasons why Risk was made and none of them has ever seemed much like the complete story. There is a long version to Megadeth’s VH1 Behind the Music documentary where Dave is shown to say one thing about Risk- obviously in the late-90s early 2000s, and then when they cut to 2010s Dave he’s saying something completely different. In interviews he’s also pointed out other completely different things that conflict with the other things that were said previously.
Honestly, I think Dave Mustaine should be proud of this album. ‘Risk’ contains some of his best vocal performances and some of his best songwriting he’s ever dedicated to tape. And that’s not an insult because I believe there’s a reason why so many elements of the Risk-style of songwriting bled through to the next 3 albums in the discography.
Dave Mustaine is actually an extremely versatile songwriter than I think he gives himself credit for. Of course, I know he has fans to appease, and even when Megadeth went out on a limb- barely, mind you- with ‘Super Collider,’ it became clear that he is pigeonholed in this realm of the ‘Endgame’ style of songwriting. I actually believe that Dave Mustaine has a stronger grasp on music composition than his counterparts in Metallica, and I think that’s why he has the tendency to surround himself with musicians from different musical backgrounds- people like Chris Poland, Marty Friedman, Chris Broderick, Al Pitrelli, etc. to help expand on his obvious depth of knowledge of music composition.
I’m not trying to sound like a contrarian or a troll when I say this, but the discourse on ‘Risk’ has not gotten much better in the same way as opinions on albums like ‘Youthanasia’ and ‘So Far, So Good… So What!’ have changed for the better. At best, ‘Risk’ for many is a boring album with a couple OK songs on it- but at least it’s not ‘Super Collider.’ This isn’t good enough for me. I feel like I’m the only one who is saying that, not only is Risk good, but it’s one of the best by Megadeth. This isn’t to downplay the rest of their catalog, if Rust in Peace has a musical counterpart that is its equal inverse, Risk is in the same tier as ‘Rust in Peace.’
Yes, I just called ‘Risk’ the equal opposite of ‘Rust in Peace.’ I can’t see how it isn’t. The songwriting and arrangements in ‘Risk’ show their genius in their subtlety. The songwriting is simple, but effective and deceptively deep in ways that capture the essence of what made Megadeth different from the rest of the Big 4 thrash bands and those bands that existed to emulate those styles. ‘Risk’ is the embodiment of what made Megadeth unique and while it sheds a lot of the super fast, technical writing of ‘Rust in Peace,’ the mere concept of slower playing doesn’t instantly make it any worse.
An album by a heavy metal band doesn’t have to be heavy to be good. If the songwriting stands up and is of high quality, whether it’s a piano ballad or a technical, brutal, progressive death metal song, it’s high quality regardless of the genre. I don’t see what’s difficult to understand about that, but apparently ‘Risk’ would have been better off with another band’s name on it or whatever.
