Megadeth-Set the world afire

Capitol
2008

Megadeth certainly seem set on keeping their name out there what with having released a studio album, a boxed set, a live CD, a live DVD and now this anthology all in about a two year time frame. This two CD set has 35 tracks spanning much of Megadeth's long and varied career. I got into Megadeth in 1986 when "Peace sells" was released and immediately became a fan. I was drawn in by Mustaine's unique vocals and the finger bending riffs, they were different from other thrash bands of the time. My favorite albums are "Rust in peace", "Peace sells" and "Killing is my business" because those were the albums where they showed their edge and bared their teeth a lot more. Those were the albums where Megadeth were at their best at creating these winding, slightly offbeat tracks. "Countdown to extinction" in 1992 was a good album, but it most certainly spelled the beginning of Megadeth's attempt to establish a more mainstream metal sound. Then the next decade saw them issue a series of albums that had them slowing down and settling into more basic material. The first disc in this set does have mainly earlier material starting with "Mechanix" from Killing is my business and ending with a previously unreleased demo version of "High speed dirt", the final version of that song would of course end up on "Countdown to extinction". We get a lot of their signature tracks like "Wake up dead" and "Hanger 18", but no real surprises. Disc 2 picks up on more "Countdown" material beginning with "Skin o' my teeth" and continues into some of their later material with again not a great deal of surprises. The final two tracks on the last disc are live versions of "Symphony of destruction" and "Peace sells" both recorded at the Cow Palace in 1992 and this version of "Symphony" was previously unreleased in the U.S. Okay, this is a decent package, but I can't help but wonder why there are only three songs from "Peace sells" included yet the far more uneven "So far, so good, so what?" gets four tracks and the fantastic "Hook in mouth" isn't one of the four. The biggest question here is why they felt the need to release this collection when the huge majority of the material was included on the "War Chest" boxed set from 2007? Actually the single disc "Greatest Hits" from 2005 also includes much of the same material as this set although "Set the world afire" of course has more. Releasing multiple best of, greatest hits and anthology type albums in a relatively short amount of time is something that seems to occur more and more in recent years. Still if you don't already own all of these studio albums or the boxed set then it may be something that you want to track down.