Megadeth’s ’The Sick, the Dying…and the Dead!’ earns top-10 ’Billboard’ 200 debut

Megadeth‘s new album The Sick, the Dying…and the Dead! has debuted in the top 10 on the Billboard 200.

The 16th studio effort from the thrash-metallers lands at #3 on this week’s edition of the all-genre chart, earning a total of 48,000 equivalent album units, 45,000 of which were traditional album sales.

Megadeth now has a total of eight top-10 albums. The group’s highest-charting release is 1992’s Countdown to Extinction, which hit #2 on the Billboard 200.

The Sick, the Dying…and the Dead! includes the single “Soldier On!” and a collaboration with Ice-T. It also includes a surprising co-write from Dr. Anthony Cmelak, who treated Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine during his battle with throat cancer in 2019.

As Cmelak tells The Tennessean, Mustaine recruited him to write some lines for the song “Dogs of Chernobyl.” In particular, Mustaine was interested in Cmelak’s expertise on radiation.

“I think [Mustaine] wanted descriptive terminology on how your bodily functions would change after exposure to massive doses of radiation,” Cmelak shares. “He also wanted a flair of someone being left behind…I geared toward that and it came around very quickly.”