Steve Digiorgio (Testament, Sadus, Death) is the bass player on the new Megadeth album. Long suspected and unconfirmed until today, Dave Mustaine credited Digiorgio for the bass work new Megadeth album, The Sick, The Dying, And The Dead, due on July 8, 2022 in a new interview today. The album features a cover of Dead Kennedys’ “Police Truck” and Sammy Hagar’s “This Planet’s On Fire”, with vocals from Hagar. Mustaine shared this new leader shared the news of DiGiorgio’s involvement, replacing the previously deleted bass tracks of former bassist David Ellefson in an interview with Jose Mangin of SiriusXM Liquid Metal, while discussing the upcoming leg 2 of the “Metal Tour of The Year” with Lamb of God, Trivium, and In Flames as well as the upcoming Megaddeth cover of “Take No Prisoners” Mustaine did with LoG, debuting on April 1st.

As transcribed by Blabbermouth.net

“We obviously had that weird little…well, it wasn’t little, but we had something happen that we needed to make a decision on, and it set us back a little bit timing-wise, because we needed to recalibrate and find someone to perform the bass parts, and we found who I thought was the perfect fit for us while I decided what to do… Do you know who it was? …It was Steve DiGiorgio. You’re the first person I told.”

 

He continued: “It was a good choice. I didn’t think about anybody else at the time. I was thinking about ‘who’s the hottest guy out there that can play these new songs?’ [Mustaine’s son] Justis told me one of the fastest songs we’ve ever written is on this record. I don’t care what anybody says — bass may be less strings than guitar, but it’s difficult to play, if you’re like me. I have a real hard time playing the bass. I wrote the riff for ‘Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying?’ for Pete’s sake, but you know… having to jam some of those parts that fast, it just kills your fingers.”