10 Bands Who Used Songs To 'One-Up' Rival Artists

Dave Mustaine had really gotten a raw deal in the early 80's. After working his way across America with his bandmates in Metallica, he was rudely woken up once they reached New York only to be told that he had been fired. Once he was sent packing, Mustaine's internal fire drove him to start his new thrash titans Megadeth.

Though Dave had specifically asked them not to, many of his original ideas ended up on Metallica's first record Kill Em All. In an effort to get back at his former band, Mustaine took the basis of one of the songs he wrote for Metallica and wrote a completely different song around it. While Metallica devotees know the band's early epic "The Four Horsemen," Mustaine quickly countered it with "The Mechanix," whose melody and chord structure is identical to the way Mustaine originally played it with when he was with Hetfield and co.

Trying to be better than the rest yet again, Mustaine took the original arrangement and beefed up the tempo so it would sound faster and meaner than the original. He may not have seen Metallica through to the end, but "The Mechanix" was one of the songs that gave Mustaine a new career after being sacked from his own band.