CHRIS ADLER On Working With MEGADETH's DAVE MUSTAINE: 'He's The Most Generous, Nicest, Kindest Guy'

Former LAMB OF GOD drummer Chris Adler says that getting the call to play with one of his favorite bands, MEGADETH, was a “dream come true”.

Adler played drums on MEGADETH‘s 2016 album “Dystopia” and took part in most of the band’s live shows in support of the CD between January and May of that year. On those shows in late 2015 and early 2016 where Adler was unable to perform with MEGADETH, he was temporarily replaced by Tony Laureano (ex-DIMMU BORGIR, NILE, ANGELCORPSE),the veteran extreme-metal skinsman who had worked as the band’s drum tech since 2011. Since May 2016, MEGADETH has utilized the services of Dirk Verbeuren, the Belgian-born-and-now-Los-Angeles-based drummer who had previously played with SOILWORK for more than a decade.

In a new interview with Scott Penfold of Loaded Radio, Adler stated about what it was like to work with MEGADETH leader Dave Mustaine:  ”Oh, man. [It was a] dream come true. Yeah. Everybody loves to pick on Dave, and I feel bad for him. He had a rough time growing up, and I know his whole story, and we spent a lot of time talking about stuff. And Dave‘s a really — he’s a very nice guy. He’s troubled, but in a way that makes him one of the best in the world. And, man, can that guy play guitar — it’s unreal.

“When I was a kid, skateboarding or whatever, I got the cassette tape, listened to all this punk rock and all that stuff and I heard that MEGADETH song, and that really set me on the path to do everything that I did,” Chris explained. So to get that call was a dream come true.”

Reflecting on his studio sessions with MEGADETH, Chris said: “It started with… We met a few times just to see if we’d be able to get along. We had met in 2005 on a tour and got along then fairly well. And so he brought me to Nashville. I think for about two or three months he rented me a house in Nashville near him. And we would get together at a studio that was kind of in the middle and just jam all the time. It was just me and him for, I think, two months, kind of writing the stuff and going over the stuff. They had a great engineer, Chris Rakestraw, that was there helping us put parts together and thinking about stuff. And I was totally wide-eyed, [and it was] like a dream-come-true kind of moment. But I was still professional about it in that I know I’m only here for the session work. But that turned out so well that basically he asked me to be in the band, and two years later we’re touring the world and the thing wins a Grammy, which was insane. [That was] maybe another thing that caused tension in LAMB OF GOD. I had done a record with PROTEST THE HERO that won them a [Canadian] Grammy [equivalent]. Now I go join MEGADETH and that wins a Grammy. What’s going on here? But, yeah, it was a thrill.”

Elaborating on his personal relationship with Mustaine, Adler said: “Because of really who he is and the attention that he would have in any room that he would walk into, it’s hard to get into that inner circle. But once you’re in, he’s the most generous, nicest, kindest guy. He’s got a beautiful family. They’re all wonderful people. I understand the defenses, the walls that are built up a little bit, just for his own protection, really. Maybe he could have said things differently here and there along the way. It’s not for me to say. But we had a amazing time together, and I still consider him a friend and it was an honor to be a part of that for as long as I was.”

Dirk was recommended for the MEGADETH job by Adler, who called Verbeuren “probably [one of the] top three drummers in the world.”

During a July 2016 press conference in Tel Aviv, Israel, Mustaine said that Adler was never a full-time member of MEGADETH and was merely “a session guy” for the “Dystopia” album and some of the subsequent shows. “It was what you could call ‘work for hire,'” he said.

Four months earlier, Mustaine told the South Orange, New Jersey radio station WSOU that he “thought it was really inspiring being around [Chris] and his positive energy and really optimistic outlook towards life and music in general. It was good for me [and] it was good for the band.”

Asked in a 2021 interview with Saint Virus Bar how he landed the MEGADETH gig, Chris said: “I’m in L.A. I’m recording drums for [LAMB OF GOD‘s ‘VII: Sturm Und Drang’ album]. We had been on tour in 2005 with MEGADETH. And I get a call really early in the morning — like, six in the morning. And it is Dave Mustaine‘s guitar tech, a guy named Willie G who I became good friends with along the tour; a great guy. And Willie‘s, like, ‘Hey, your phone’s gonna ring in about five minutes, and you should answer it.’ I’m, like, ‘Okay. Sure.’ And the phone rings in five minutes, and it’s Dave. And Dave‘s, like, ‘Hey, I enjoyed touring with you. Good chat now and then.’ He’s not a particularly social guy on tour, but we did hang out a couple of times for breakfast or whatever. And he’s, like, ‘There’s a lot of people that I really trust that tell me you’re somebody that I think I should be talking to right now. I’d really like to go back and make a pretty sick thrash record, and I’m interested in having you be a part of that, if you’d like to be.’ And it was a ‘Candid Camera’ kind of moment. ‘Is something happening?’ It really was the band that changed my life, and now I’m on a phone call that’s about to change my life again.”

Back in October 2015, Adler spoke to the “Eddie Trunk Podcast” about what he thought about MEGADETH‘s “Th1rt3en” (2011) and “Super Collider” (2013) albums and how that affected his involvement in the making of “Dystopia”. He said: “They were not my favorite MEGADETH records, but I think it’s great that that band has been able to do those things — whatever they wanted to do — and not try to please everybody, and it’s not gonna be the same every single time. Just even creatively, within LAMB OF GOD, doing this song that we have, ‘Overlord’, it’s nice to be able to just, once in a while, stretch out and do something people might not expect or just indulge your creative path in a different way. So I think it’s cool that [Mustaine] did that. But, yeah, it was super intimidating for me to come in and do that, because this guy’s my hero. Now, the big thing was none of the material was stinker stuff. I mean, the guy is writing amazing stuff just all day long; in his sleep he’s writing better riffs than… well, the whole world. So there was never a time where I came in and said, ‘I really don’t like this. This sucks,’ or something like that. It was just more like, ‘Well, what do you think about speeding it up? What do you think about making this part a little bit shorter, making this part a little bit longer?’ And I felt like it was important for me to do that, because he could have hired anybody to come in there and just do what they were told. And I felt like the reason that he did call me, and maybe that the reason there were no other auditions, is because he didn’t want me to come in there and just say, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ I felt like it was important for me to try and contribute. And when it became obvious that he was open to it, I was thrilled to be now in the process and not just be a hired guy.”

Regarding some MEGADETH fans’ desire to see the band make an all-out thrash album and how “Dystopia” fit into that, Chris told the “Eddie Trunk Podcast” at the time: “Well, I am a MEGADETH fan, and that’s exactly what I want as well. And now I’m in MEGADETH, and I seem to have the ear of the creator. So, I feel like it’s absolutely the best that MEGADETH can be right now at putting out a thrash metal record. And that is not in any way… I’m not trying to step back from that idea, but 1990 is never gonna happen again; it’s just not gonna happen. You can’t write ‘Peace Sells Part 2’, LAMB OF GOD couldn’t write ‘New American Gospel Part 2’. People move on from those times, including the listeners. Everybody wants the album you did two albums ago, and that’s just always the way it’s gonna be for every band. So I think Dave was on the same page as me, which was: ‘Now is the time to really speed things up. Let’s get thrashy.’ And I think that’s why he called me, and I pushed for that the whole time. And I didn’t have to push hard; it was already there. The material is insane.”

In a 2015 interview with “The Jasta Show”, Chris stated about the songwriting sessions for “Dystopia”: “When I first heard the demos, it was well played and it was drum machine, drum samples and stuff, and it wasn’t really, kind of, my style of playing. It felt like, kind of, what had been going on before, where it was just [hums a basic beat]. And I really wanted to not have to do that. And so, right away, I brought that up [to Dave]. I said, ‘Listen, I’m thankful that you’re calling me. But are you calling me because somebody is telling you to call me, or are you calling me because you’ve heard what I’ve done and you want me to do some of that — at least some of that — on your record. Because this stuff that’s on here is not… that’s not cool.'”

Adler went on to say that Mustaine was open to suggestions during the songwriting process. “For example, we did a [cover of a] song called ‘Foreign Policy’ by FEAR — and old punk rock tune — and it was fun,” he said. “And it’s a punk rock tune. But as we soon as we learned it… We learned it and played it in one day. And I’m throwing in a ton of double bass. And he stops the song in the middle. He’s, like, ‘Woah woah woah. What’s with the double bass? It’s a punk rock song. What are you doing?’ I was, like, ‘Yeah, it’s a punk rock song. But FEAR was a punk rock band. MEGADETH is a metal band. This is MEGADETH. Let’s do this the MEGADETH way.’ And we kind of moved on to other things. And the next day he came back in. He said, ‘You know what?! I was thinking about that last night. You’re right, man.’ He was, like, ‘Let’s do this. Let’s make it MEGADETH.'”