Megadeth's new album The Sick, the Dying and the Dead is “super-close” to being released, Dave Mustaine says

Megadeth's 16th studio album, The Sick, the Dying and the Dead, has been fully mastered and is “super-close” to being released, according to frontman Dave Mustaine.

“We're super-close to having The Sick, the Dying and the Dead out,” Mustaine tells a fan in a new video message on Cameo (transcribed by Blabbermouth). “We've been mixing and mastering it, and the mastering was done yesterday. So now it's off to the label, and pretty soon it's gonna be in your hands.”

In the same video, Mustaine gives a brief tour of his home studio, which was also seen earlier this year when he shared a five-second snippet of a fresh rapid-fire thrash riff from The Sick, the Dying and the Dead.

In terms of the forthcoming album's theme, its title track is about the plague, Mustaine explains. “The song itself was a historical journey of how the plague started and where it went, starting with rats on ships carrying disease, coming ashore in Sicily,” he told American Songwriter in a recent interview.

And as he described, not all of the riffs for the new album are new themselves. “A lot of the riffs have been saved over time,” he said. “A brand-new song can be made up of something I wrote when I was 15 or 55. If it's a good riff, I'll save it.”

The news comes hot on the heels of the band's recent foray further into the crypto space, as yesterday they announced their own cryptocurrency, $MEGA.

“By buying, holding, and transacting with $MEGA, fans will gain access to exclusives and premium benefits,” the band wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday (December 2).

Despite the album apparently being “super-close” to release, we still have yet to hear news of an official full-time bassist joining the Megadeth fold. 

Earlier this year James LoMenzo was announced as the band's new live bassist, following the departure of longtime bass player David Ellefson, who was fired from the band after a series of sexually explicit videos were leaked online.

Following Ellefson's departure, it was revealed that his bass parts for The Sick, the Dying and the Dead would be re-recorded by a mysterious “stellar bass player”, though the identity of that person is still unknown.