We caught up with Megadeth legends Dave Mustaine and David Ellefson during the 2017 Loudwire Music Awards. In the PRS Backstage Artist Lounge, the duo spoke about the high points of their career since releasing Dystopia in 2016, with Mustaine adding that Megadeth has enough material written to record a new album “tomorrow.”

“If you’re a musician, you constantly think music, you emote music, so we’re always creating,” Mustaine tells us. “As far as giving you a definitive date when we’re gonna go into the studio, we could go tomorrow if we wanted to. We have enough songs.”

Despite a plentiful amount of thrash already written, Mustaine points out the importance of time off not just for quality of life, but for quality of music. “We’ve got to live life in between records — that’s what Sting said,” Mustaine recalls. “You need to live life in between records or else your lyrics are stupid.”

In the spirit of honoring Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi at the awards show, we asked the Megadeth duo about their favorite Iommi riffs. “I’m really partial to the Never Say Die album, myself,” Mustaine says. As for Ellefson, he gave up some love for earlier Sabbath. “‘Paranoid’ was the first riff I heard, it stuck with me my whole life,” the bassist says. “As soon as you hear it, you know it’s him.”

Check out our exclusive interview with Dave Mustaine and David Ellefson in the clip above!

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