Last month, MEGADETH bassist David Ellefson told SiriusXM‘s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk” that Mustaine was still laying down his vocal and guitar tracks for the band’s new album. “Dirk (Verbeuren, drums) and I did our stuff back in May and June, and then Dave and Kiko (Loureiro, guitar) were laying guitars down, and then over to vocals, and et cetera, et cetera,” he said. “So it’s moving along well, actually.”

Asked if Mustaine has had any issues with singing in the studio following his nearly six-month battle with throat cancer in 2019, Ellefson said: “No, that’s not come up. It’s interesting. We were on the Megacruise (in October 2019). Dave was not able to be on that cruise, because his treatments were finished up, and he just needed to rest and obviously not be around a lot of people at that time. But then we turned the corner into 2020, and we went over and we did the FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH / MEGADETH / BAD WOLVES tour, which was a big sports arena tour all across Europe. Dave took it easy at rehearsal in Nashville for the first week, and then we got on the stage up in Helsinki and moved across Europe and the U.K. and did the shows. And every show got a little better, a little stronger as far as his voice and him wanting to be a little more adventurous to trying different songs. And I think that really helped. I think it naturally helped him kind of open his voice up and be comfortable with it. He had to take it easy and not push it too hard.”

In  October, Mustaine told “The Five Count” radio show that MEGADETH‘s new LP will “probably” be “one of the most ferocious records we’ve done since ‘Rust In Peace’. David Ellefson, he’s a pretty good barometer of things, and when he did his bass parts, he went, ‘Man, my arm is killing me. I can’t believe this.'”