So Far, So Good... So What? (Remastered)

The remixed and remastered Megadeth albums released in 2004 aren't your typical cash-ins. They're stark improvements over the originals: group leader Dave Mustaine did the remixing and remastering himself, making especially significant revisions to the earlier albums, and he includes insightful liner notes for each reissue, including track-by-track commentary for the bonus tracks, as well as lyrics and period photos. The reissue of So Far, So Good...So What! is perhaps the most drastically improved. Upon its initial release, the album was as much of a disappointment as it was a step forward for Megadeth. Its predecessor, Peace Sells...But Who's Buying? (1986), had been an instantly acknowledged landmark, one of the definitive albums in the then-burgeoning thrash movement. But then, for whatever reason, Mustaine fired guitarist Chris Poland and drummer Gar Samuelson and replaced them with Jeff Young and Chuck Behler, respectively. Moreover, Mustaine's notorious substance abuse was really getting the best of him around this time, something he alludes to in his liner notes here, stating that "the production [of SFSGSW] was horrible, mostly due to substances and the priorities we had or didn't have at the time...." And indeed, the original production wasn't great, but such commentary belies the fact that SFSGSW was a flawed follow-up to the brilliance of Peace Sells. Beyond the "horrible" production, the album was laden with poor songwriting — about every other song here is less than impressive, chiefly the much-derided straightforward cover of "Anarchy in the U.K." (Mustaine writes that he was "listening to a lot of punk rock at the time.") However, the good songs here are more than good — they're some of the best songs Megadeth ever recorded: the instrumental opener "Into the Lungs of Hell" (presented here with the addition of explosion sound effects), "Set the World Afire" (which Mustaine writes was the first song he had written after he left Metallica), "In My Darkest Hour" (the first song he ever wrote straight through, inspired by the tragic death of his friend and fellow Metallica bandmate Cliff Burton — and presented here with an improved intro), and "Hook in Mouth" (an incendiary assault on the PMRC and that political group's attacks against heavy metal at the time). The bonus tracks here are the original mixes of a few songs. The story here is that Mustaine had a falling out with co-producer Paul Lani during the mixing of the album while in Woodstock, NY, and brought the project back home to Los Angeles, where Michael Wagener was brought in to salvage the recordings. So this gives you three different productions of this music — the original Lani mixes, the final Wagener ones, and the remixes by Mustaine — and it's curious to match them up, especially if you're interested in audio production. Such exercises don't change the conventional knowledge that SFSGSW is an album that is troubled, if at times amazing, but they do further highlight why this is perhaps the most puzzling Megadeth album in the canon.