In the 1992, the
thrash metal band Megadeth release their fifth album, “Countdown to
extinction”. For the band from Los Angeles it was a worldwide
success, follow by a double platinum album.
I choose it for two personal reasons: the music and the artwork. Both of them are very aggressive, deep and with a lot of link to controversial topic, from political to military to suicide.
Puppet regime run by phantom government, global conflict and the Iraq of Saddam Hussein, social inequality, economic concern, paranoia and a very lunatic mind are all topic you can found in this album.
I was young when I listened for the first time this album. And it was love from the first song. The song played technically perfect, the raw notes and sound, the aggressive voice and the lyrics, the aura of insanity of the all album simply attracts me like a bee to a flower.
For me it was a very deep, dark period and this album reflect perfectly my internal war, the conflict from who I was and what the world wanted from me.
The artwor match
perfectly the album. It's an image of Vic Rattlehead, the mascotte of
the band (Vic means “Victim”, NdA), not like a skeleton as usual,
but like an old, skinny and malnourished man, in a dirty, grounge,
squallid prison. You can see the blue sky form the small window of
the cell, and this contrast with the rest of the artwork as a very
emotional impact.
For me is a great
album, that everyone need to listen at least one time in the life,
even if don't likes the metal genre. The words, the music, the way it
was recorded simply stay inside you like scratch on your skin. No one
can rest the same after listen carefully this album, they force you
to think about unliked, not-mainstream topic. It changed a lot my
life, at that age it shaped my idea of the world.
