CHRIS ADLER: MEGADETH's DAVE MUSTAINE Has 'An Incredible Sense Of Humor'

Steven Rosen of Ultimate-Guitar.com recently conducted an interview with LAMB OF GOD and MEGADETH drummer Chris Adler. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: Can you talk about what your experience has been like doing the new MEGADETH record?

Adler: It’s been really, really great. I was humbled to be asked to do it. It was fantastic working with Dave. We were talking about earlier with LAMB OF GOD where I would purposely work on ideas that would syncopate with what they were doing instead of locking in. It was really great for me just as a professional to be able to come into a situation where that was probably and purposely off the table.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: Finding those types of alternate grooves wasn’t why you were brought into MEGADETH?

Adler: It was, like, “I am here to lock into what they’re doing and help those guitar players shine. That’s my job in this band and so I wanna do that better than the guys they’ve had before do it.” So instead of trying to show off or trying to come up with interesting, modern rhythmic technique, “How can I get my footwork to line up to the triplets the other guys couldn’t do?” or that kind of thing. Or, “We can play it faster now” because I’m able to do different things. It was great on a professional level to kind of have that in mind.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: What was it like working with Dave Mustaine?

Adler: Dave has been super, super cool about the whole thing. Letting me contribute anything I wanted and helping him arrange stuff: speed stuff up, slow stuff done. Talk about what it is I liked about old MEGADETH records and how do we resurrect some of those ideas. Not necessarily from the records but just how do we get those feelings again out of the listener and push each other in the process.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: It sounds like Dave really gave you a lot of space do your thing.

Adler: We really had a good time. The one thing I learned about him that I didn’t know and we had known each other for a long time, is that he has got an incredible sense of humor. I know he gets beat up a lot for the things he says but he’s really genuinely a funny guy and we had a great time together.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: How did Kiko Loureiro work on the MEGADETH record?

Adler: Kiko is just on another planet. This dude speaks an entire different musical vocabulary than anybody I’ve ever seen. The band guys all lived together in a little house and he got there and he was talking to me about this project he just finished and he was over in Japan and blah blah blah. He mentioned he had done a solo record and I was like, “Oh, that’s great, man. I’d love to hear it” so he gave me a copy.

Ultimate-Guitar.com: What did you think?

Adler: I’m looking at the back of it to see who played drums and it’s Marco Minnemann, and I’m, like, “What is going on? Oh, my god. I’m just with the most elite team of people.” He was such a ripper. He had a guitar in his hand seriously 25 hours a day and constantly playing classical stuff and then he’d rip into jazz stuff. It was all over the place and he’s just an incredibly talented guy.

Read the entire interview at Ultimate-Guitar.com.