Megadeth are covering Metallica's "Ride The Lightning" on their final album

Putting a period on his career, Megadeth frontman and former Metallica guitarist Dave Mustaine says he's included a new version of the song he never got to record on his next album.

By Matt Schimkowitz | October 30, 2025 | 7:00pm

(Photo by Tim Mosenfelder/WireImage)

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Hello, Dave, meet the old Dave and his Metallica way of life. In a video promoting the upcoming 17th and “final” Megadeth album, Dave Mustaine revealed that there will be a bonus track to bring his career full circle. A cover of the Metallica song “Ride the Lightning,” which Mustaine penned with the band before getting the boot back in 1983, will appear as a bonus track on his band’s upcoming swan song, the self-titled Megadeth, due out in January.

“On the new album, we recorded ‘Ride The Lightning,’ and the reason we did was obviously that I had a lot to do with writing it,” Mustaine says in the video. “When James and I were working on the song, it became clear to me how good of a guitar player he was, and I thought it would be really cool to close the circle and show respect to play the songs that I’ve written with Metallica and to honor our friendship, even though it’s been strained and ruined from emotions over the years when we were not necessarily friendly.”

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“I’ve always had tremendous respect for James’ guitar playing and Lars’ songwriting, so it was cool to do this.”

Mustaine warns fans that Megadeth, as they are wont to do, “sped it up just a little teeny bit.” He also says that he “played” around with the solo, so expect “some differences with the tempos, and of course, I sing differently from James.”

The bad blood between the groups had existed for years, with Mustaine rightly upset and disappointed that the band he was kicked out of turned out to be Metallica. The 2003 documentary Some Kind Of Monster includes footage from a 2001 meeting between Mustaine and his “little Danish friend,” Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich, but by that point, gone were the days of the two of them “digging a hole in the fucking dirt and smoking hash through the ground.” It didn’t exactly clear the air, and the conversation didn’t put an end to Mustaine talking shit about Lars.

However, while Mustaine’s hurt feelings stemmed from being fired from one of the most successful and influential rock bands ever, the groups eventually dug a hole in the fucking dirt and buried the hatchet in it. In 2010, the “Big Four” of thrash metal, Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, and Megadeth, performed together for the first time and toured under the “Big Four” banner. Mustaine even joined Metallica, along with other members of the tour, for a rendition of Diamond Head’s “Am I Evil?” The following year, Mustaine joined Metallica on stage for one of their 30th anniversary concerts in San Francisco.

Megadeth rides the lightning into stores on January 23, 2026.