“Prepare my friends to follow me”

Thrash giants Megadeth go all King Diamond on Mary Jane, weaving a witchy tale of vengeance from beyond the grave. Taken from 1988’s drug-addled So Far, So Good… So What! the track has a thick ghostly atmosphere (aided by the album’s reverb-heavy sound) and a haunting mix of clean and distorted guitars. As always with Megadeth, the guitars are state-of-the-art with numerous twists and turns but frontman Dave Mustaine excels vocally too with a tortured and hate-filled performance. Nowadays I tend to associate ‘deth with songs about politics and society but, in their earlier days, songs about magic and the occult were pretty common and Mary Jane is one of my favourite of the lot. In fact, it’s one of my favourite Megadeth songs… period!