Posted on: October 15, 2007 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

Megadeth – Warchest / 2007 Capitol / 66 Tracks / http://www.megadeth.com / http://www.capitolrecords.com /

Megadeth is one of the bands that I first learned about when I got into metal. In fact, one of the CDs that has stuck with me for over a decade (the only other one is Marilyn Manson’s “Antichrist Superstar”) is Megadeth’s “Rust in Peace”. It makes sense that Megadeth should get a box set since they have been going strong for over twenty years. “Warchest” is a four CD and one DVD set that has a number of rarities present. The biggest “find” for fans of Megadeth has to be present on the DVD, which is a 15-year old live show captured at the Hammersmith.

The band goes through a “greatest hits” during this set alone, including such classics as “Hangar 18”, “In My Darkest Hour”, and “Peace Sells”. While that is not enough to merit the boxed set’s price, the other inclusions are. A number of the tracks on the CDs are live cuts from the band’s career (this is aside from disc 4, which is a recording of the band’s performance at Wembley in 1990), and a similar amount of the songs here are previously unreleased. Seven “new” tracks are present, while another three are versions that were present only on foreign version of Megadeth’s albums. The rest of the tracks are tracks that are both major hits of the band (“In My Darkest Hour”, “Trust”, “Crush ‘Em”), and lesser known songs that only true Megadeth fanatics will be familiar with (“The Skull Beneath My Skin”, “New World Order”, “Never Say Die”).

“Warchest”, if individuals are willing to sink in around $50 for it, has a tremendous amount of material for individuals to sit down with. The number of unreleased and live songs is sufficiently many to act almost like a new album worth of Megadeth songs, and special care has been taken to fit the tracks in with similar-sounding songs. Megadeth is still going strong, just releasing an album earlier this year, and “Warchest” shows that there is a tremendous amount of material still left in the archives, enough to keep individuals interested in the band until they can come out with their next studio album. “Warchest” is for fanatics as well as fans that are just starting out; the price may be a little prohibitive, but it shouldn’t be considering all told, it comes out to under what three CDs would cost new.

Top Tracks: Wake Up Dead, Almost Honest

Rating: 7.1/10

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