"At some point you have to ask yourself, ‘When is enough?'"

If that’s the question—and it definitely is—Dave Mustaine has the answer. After 17 albums, countless tours, and 40-plus years, he’s pulling the plug on Megadeth, the band he started in 1983 after being unceremoniously kicked to the curb by Metallica. Exalted as one of thrash metal’s "Big Four," alongside Slayer, Anthrax, and his former bandmates, Megadeth released their final album in late January. They’ll take one last spin around the globe that will likely last well into 2027 or possibly even 2028. And then, Mustaine says, that’s all she wrote.

“I’ve always said when it starts to get hard that I’m going to stop before I can’t play,” he tells CREEM. “We all know certain bands from different genres—they’re really good, but they’re just old and it doesn’t seem the same. I saw a guy that was a singer in a well-known metal band with a super talented guitar player. We were doing Loud Park in Japan, and they played the day before us. The singer sang the entire set a whole octave lower. Imagine a guy that sings in a falsetto singing in a chest voice."