Megadeth has been intermittently talking about doing their first new album with ex-Soilwork drummer Dirk Verbeuren, and now we've got some semi-concrete statements from frontman Dave Mustaine.

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Mustaine tells Mitch Lafon that they're working on the album and that Verbeuren is playing some seriously insane stuff. He adds that he "never thought we were gonna be playing this fast or this aggressive again," which is pretty damn exciting.

"We've been putting new music up in my Dropbox. And the stuff that Dirk's [Verbeuren, drums] been playing along to it is scary. We've never had any of those blast-beat kind of things in our music before. "Some of the drumming on this is mind-blowing. It's making me a better guitar player again, which I love. But I never thought we were gonna be playing this fast or this aggressive again.""We're hoping April of next year. We've got a huge festival that we're gonna be announcing and I'll have management tell you everything as soon as possible.

Mustaine adds that they're trying to release the new album sometime in April around a newly revamped Gigantour-type tour.

"It's really a big deal. It's kind of an equivalent of Gigantour, but it's a much fresher idea. We've got that set up in about 10 cities in April. We're gonna do that again for a three-day weekend in the middle of the year, and then we're gonna do probably about another 10 of those dates at the latter part of the year. "We've got a bunch of other really fantastic things that I wish I could tell you. We've got a cruise, like a 'Murder Who Died' kind of boot camp thing we're gonna be doing over in Europe. And Pledge [Music] is gonna be in the studio with us again, and blah blah blah blah… So it's a great day to be a Megadeth fan." Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

So yeah, 2019 is going to rule.

[via UG]