Review: "Countdown to Extinction" by American Heavy Metal Band Megadeth

Countdown to Extinction is the 5^th studio album by American heavy metal band Megadeth and in 2017 it has been 25 years since its release and that’s one of the reasons that we have to take a look back at the album that helped Megadeth become part of the mainstream American music scene. Still present on the album is the heaviness, anger, and aggression that we heard on 1990’s Rust in Peace. If there was any wonder how good the band would end up being with a more mainstream release, those concerns were put to rest very shortly. This is the second album with the classic Megadeth lineup of Mustaine, Marty Friedman, Nick Menza, and David Ellefson.

The first song called "Skin O’ My Teeth" is a song about someone that has become a wreck physically. He is really wounded and in lots of pain and there is some doubt as to whether he will survive from his injuries. "Symphony of Destruction" is a classic Megadeth song with good bass lines. The song is on the Japanese version of the album Youthanasia as a bonus track. There is a good guess that Skin O’ My Teeth was deemed to be significant because in 2002, Finnish melodic death metal band Kalmah would cover this song on their album called They Will Return. With this first song, there is the feel that this album will not be like Rust in Peace.

"Foreclosure of a Dream" may not be one of the most well-known songs on the album but it surely has an important message that we can all remember.

The song "This Was My Life" is another classic song and this one is about the fact that since human beings have sinned since the beginning of time, the penalty for this is death. If you commit a crime, you will have to do the time. "Countdown to Extinction" is a song about the possibility that the world may end. Dinosaurs eventually became extinct and the song raises that important question of whether human life will survive or whether it will cease to exist. As Dave Mustaine famously says in the song: “no more left only one.”

"Captive Honour" is a song about a criminal that has just been sentenced to life in prison with no chance of getting parole. By this point in the album it is a virtual certainty that Countdown to Extinction is the finest album to have the classic Megadeth lineup. There are very few flaws with this album and we could argue that the band was at its peak with this album. At the first writing of this review, it was my perspective that Megadeth would see a steep and steady decline until 2001 when they regained their form. Is that still the case in 2021? No, Megadeth did not really experience a deep sloppy decline as I had thought before. They changed and just tried to become more of a part of the mainstream music scene in the 1990s. Countdown to Extinction might as well be classified as an album that met its demand with the times. It still very much has that metal kind of vibe to it as you will hear especially in the last song of the album.