10 Greatest Diss Tracks In Rock Music History
4. Mechanix - Megadeth
Most guitarists wouldn't be able to recover from the hand Dave Mustaine had been dealt in the early '80s. After crisscrossing the country as the guitarist for Metallica, he arrived to cut their debut album in New York only to be booted at the last minute because of his alcohol abuse. When Mustaine formed Megadeth though, he wasn't just looking to make another metal band. He was going to beat his former bandmates at their own game.
If you listen to the skeleton of Mechanix, the whole thing is a blatant retread of what Metallica had done on the song The Four Horsemen off of Kill Em All. You can't really call it plagiarism though, since Dave had written most of the song and specifically asked Metallica not to use any of his material, which they obviously did not listen to.
Instead of just covering his own song though, Dave came up with lyrics that were a lot more filthy than Metallica's version and ended up playing it even faster. Seriously...listening to these two songs back to back make Megadeth's version look like the hardcore punk version of the song. Even though Metallica had the bad boy swagger, they should have never counted Dave out. After all, the bad boy attitude doesn't come out unless you have some legitimate anger behind you.