Best '90s Album: Countdown to Extinction by Megadeth

Of everything that came out in the 1990s, "Countdown to Extinction" by Megadeth has got to be my favorite album. I was in my 20s, and not into the new punk styles, or the grunge that was becoming popular. I was, and still am, into the more classic rock feel.

Countdown to Extinction is the fifth studio album by American heavy metal band Megadeth, released in 1992. It is the band's best-selling album, selling over two million copies and achieving Double platinum status.This is their most commercially successful album to date. It was also nominated for Best Metal Perforance of the 1993 Grammy Awards. This album produced Megadeth's most successful hit singles: "Symphony of Destruction", "Sweating Bullets", "Skin O' My Teeth" and "Foreclosure of a Dream".

http://www.megadeth.com/discography.php?era_id=5

Many of the songs on the album have political and military undertones. For example, "Symphony of Destruction" is a song about military dictators.In the words of Dave Mustaine:

"Basically what this is about is you take a person, a typical stereotype numbskull, and you give him the old shit, shower, and shave, throw him in a monkey suit and he can run the country...It's about the masses being led to their own destruction by a leader who's more or less a puppet of a phantom government."

"Architecture of Aggression" focuses on the complexity of military operations, inspired by the massive bombing of Iraq on January 16, 1991 that initiated Operation Desert Storm. The sound samples at the end of the
song are the voices of CNN correspondents (Peter Arnett and Bernard Shaw) in Baghdad, Iraq, describing what they saw that night.

"Ashes in Your Mouth" concentrates on the negative aftermaths of war. "It's about war and its spoils. Is crippling a country and looting its riches really worth it? For example, Saddam Hussein setting all those Kuwaiti oil wells on fire and the ensuing economic and environmental holocaust. Did the sweet taste of vindication turn to ashes in your mouth, Saddam? Yes, it did! And the LA riots, for example, many of the looters shown on TV were ultimately collared. So it wasn't worth it. The point is, sure, you can be angry and sock someone in the face, but at the end of the day, does it really feel good to hurt another human being?" (Mustaine, 1992)

Other political songs include "Captive Honour", a song about prison and the consequences of crime, "Countdown to Extinction", a song about canned hunts and "Foreclosure of a Dream", a song that looks at rise and fall of political and economic ideologies, which also includes the infamous 1988
"Read my lips" quote by George H. W. Bush (and on a more personal level, about Ellefson's parents who lost their jobs under the Reagan Administration).

The title song "Countdown To Extinction" also won Megadeth the Humane Society of the United States "Genesis Award" for its dealings with issues of animal welfare.
"The main idea came from Nick, who saw an article in Time magazine about these assholes who poach and hunt animals. It disgusted all of us. These guys get ten to twenty thousand dollars per animal, depending on the rarity of the species. It deals with canned hunts in America's south - in Texas,
for example, they cage exotic animals and drug them up. When they stagger out of the cage, hunters shoot them in the head, take a picture with the dead animal and say that they hunted in some exotic place."
(Mustaine, 1992)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countdown_to_Extinction

http://megadeth.rockmetal.art.pl/lyrics_countdown.html

http://www.megadeth.com/home.php

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulpq8rDS28s

I have personally listened to this, so many times, I have the album memorized. I had the cassette. When this album came out on CD, I bought it. I play it in my car, on the way to work, even now. My brother, from time to time, breaks out on his guitar with a song or two from this album.
It's classic, and the songs have real meaning.

To buy a copy of the album, go to:

http://www.fye.com/Countdown-to-Extinction-Front-Page_stcVVproductId207603VVcatId455366VVviewprod.htm

http://www.amazon.com/Countdown-Extinction-Megadeth/dp/B0002EXH4K

http://www.mp3search.ru/album.html?id=8300

http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/6756066/a/Countdown+To+Extinction.htm

http://www.suncoast.com/Countdown-to-Extinction-Music_stcVVproductId207603VVcatId458211VVviewprod.htm