After the arena-rock slowdowns (!) and banjo interludes (!!!) of 2013’s Super Collider, Dave Mustaine & Co. return to the paranoid, bone-dry thrash that made Megadeth teenage heroes in their early days. Opening with a conspiracist’s cornucopia of bad news (“The Threat Is Real”), Dystopia tears through 11 grim fight songs about political celebrity (“The Emperor”), global politics (“Post American World,” which borrows its title from a Fareed Zakaria book), and a host of other things to be worried about before capping it off with a cover of hardcore band Fear’s “Foreign Policy”—a song whose satirical suggestions of harmony through violent oppression hit eerily close to home.
- Metallica
- Testament
- Slayer