"I said, ‘You are making a huge mistake – you get pulled over for any reason and they find those guns in there… well, there’s nothing more wrong than being shot with your own gun.’" How Megadeth reinvented themselves with Countdown To Extinction

Megadeth line-up 1991.

Megadeth entered the 1990s on a high. Happily, for co-founder Dave Mustaine and David ‘Junior’ Ellefson, that status was figurative rather than literal.

The debilitating impact of the serious drug habits both men had been cultivating, since investing half of the recording budget allocated to Megadeth’s 1985 debut album (Killing Is My Business… And Business Is Good) in heroin and cocaine, had been brought sharply into focus during the summer of 1988.