In an interview with Portugal's Look Mag, Megadeth's drummer Dirk Verbeuren shared his thoughts on the recent announcement about Megadeth starting work on new material for the follow-up to The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead!. Verbeuren expressed his enthusiasm, saying: "I'm happy about it. I'm very excited to do that again. It was a lot of fun creating The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead! And whenever he's ready, I will be there."
Verbeuren is particularly keen to collaborate with the band's new guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari and praised bassist James LoMenzo's longstanding contribution to the band's sound: "I'm happy to start working with Teemu, who's now joined the band. I think he will contribute a lot of cool stuff. And, of course, James also, who is an amazing bass player with a lot of history. He's already been on a couple of Megadeth albums before, so he also knows what Megadeth sounds like. And so, yeah, it's gonna be really cool to be with those two guys. And, of course, with Dave, just get together and see what we can come up with."
Verbeuren delved into the collaborative process behind The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead!, highlighting Mustaine's openness to input from band members. "Dave invited us from the beginning to bring ideas, whether it's a guitar riff, a drum beat, a lyric — anything. Any ideas we had, he said, 'Just put it in this…' We have some folders, some Dropbox folders. 'Just put it in there.' Then, as we were working together in 2019, we were all together in this house. And he would just listen to some of the stuff. And if something came up that he was, like, 'Oh, this is cool,' then we would work on it together," he explained.
"And that's how Kiko, of course, ended up writing quite a good portion of the album — some songs that he brought and then also some ideas that ended up in songs together with Dave's riffs. And the same for me. I have one riff in the song 'Night Stalkers'. And then the song 'Life In Hell', which is the second song on the album, is based on a demo that I also put there. And Dave just liked it. He thought, 'Oh, there's a cool idea there.' So, he started learning it and kind of improving the guitar riffs and eventually it turned into the song you know," Verbeuren added. "So, he was very open, and he still is — he's always very inviting for us to work as a band. He doesn't want it to be, 'Oh, I'm Dave. I'm gonna tell you what to do.' Of course, in the end, we do everything together with him, so he makes the final decision, because this is only normal. But it's very much a band process."
Addressing rumors about Mustaine's archive of riffs from the 1980s, Verbeuren confirmed it: "Yes, he has. There's a folder that he has that has everything he's ever recorded. He's sitting in 1984, maybe, on his couch in his apartment and, like, 'Oh, this is a cool riff. I'm gonna record it.' It's there. So, he has a massive collection of stuff, and we actually went through a bunch of those while we were writing and used some of them. Like some of the riffs in 'We'll Be Back', which is the first single from The Sick, The Dying… And The Dead!, they go way back to the '80s. So, yeah, it's pretty crazy."
Reflecting on his impact on the album, Verbeuren noted his balance of honoring the classic Megadeth sound while incorporating his own style: " It was my goal to respect also and honor the Megadeth sound, because all these years of music, I know as a fan myself of the band, I wanna hear that. I don't wanna hear somebody completely ignoring what Nick Menza did with the band, or what Gar Samuelson did with the band, or any of the drummers that have been there.
"They have all contributed to the sound and it's all been part of the vision that Dave had from the beginning for the band. So I adapted the way I would usually play based on what I learned in my years touring with the band and really getting very intimate knowledge about all the classic songs, the ones we play live, and learning all the parts. But at the same time, of course, I've injected some of my own flavor and my own style and my ideas. So hopefully I found a good middle ground."
