so, I developed a passing appreciation for a few more melodic subgenres of metal as an adolescent. in high school some friends got me casually into Trivium, Nightwish, and Kamelot; and obviously I knew a few Metallica songs (even though I thought as a teenager that Metallica was overrated). but I had never grown up listening to it the way that a lot of my friends had, and this was before youtube so it wasn't all that easy for me to get my hands on the "PARENTAL ADVISORY" type music that so many of my punk buddies listened to. eventually my mom would cave and pick me up some Evanescence and AFI (and even a Mindless Self Indulgence CD at one point (which she NEVER would have done if she had listened to it first)), but I never really had an interest in the double-bass heavy, growl-screaming vocals that I understood most "metal" to sound like-- at least, not until well into college. (I'm putting all this up front so that y'all know that I am not a metal connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination; please be gentle with me for the shit I'm talking. metal is a wide and beautifully varied genre, and I have since come to appreciate SO MANY of the growling and screaming varieties over the years.)
Megadeth was a band that I knew the name of, obviously, but I had absolutely no idea what they sounded like. I just knew that a lot of the strung-out smokers at school often wore their band shirts, and they were metal. my Christian household was not so naive as to believe that metal was "Satan's music," but my parents were still concerned enough with its messaging to discourage it. and to be honest, at that point I was still under the impression that I wasn't interested in listening to a song where the lead is frying his vocal cords all the way to hell and back. so I blithely passed on Megadeth, and somehow managed to get all the way to 35 years old without consciously hearing a single bit of their music.
and then, one day, I was watching the Game Grumps play through Breath of the Wild. and they started making these references to some Megadeth song and joking about it. and I waved it off like "whatever, doesn't matter." but these jokes kept showing up in later videos, and eventually in 2022 I paused in the middle of a video and thought to myself, "alright. I need to know what the fuck these boys are talking about, because there's no way the song can possibly be this memeable."
I opened a new tab in youtube, and searched for "megadeth sweating bullets".
Friends. Comrades. this song is ironically one of the FUNNIEST SONGS I'VE EVER HEARD. I say "ironically" because I am very sure that Mr Dave Mustaine was 100% serious when he wrote and helped produce it some 30 years ago, and high school me probably would have fucking loved this song, if not for his vocals.
see, first of all: the verses to Sweating Bullets are Dave talking sarcastically and snidely to himself as if he is the awful intrusive voice(s) within his own head, and the chorus is Dave himself crying out in desperation about how he feels like he's losing his grip on his sanity and can't trust his own thoughts and emotions-- and honestly, that kind of fucking slaps! it's a GREAT concept for a song and it's SUPER relatable if you have mental illness, especially of the anxious and/or psychotic variety... but, they're not very good lyrics?? the verses are structured like a free-form journal entry with absolutely no rhyme or melody-- which is, I'm pretty sure, exactly what he's going for? so I wouldn't otherwise be mad-- but it all comes off like a petulant teenager who's mad that mom won't let him go to laser tag until he finishes his homework. lines like "a dark, black past is my most valued possession," "it gives me a migraine headache thinking down to your level," and "nice story; tell it to Reader's Digest!" even when we get to the chorus, it's not structured very well and the rhymes are a bit slant.
and then, there's Dave Mustaine's voice itself. I'll start out by saying that Sweating Bullets is the only Megadeth song I've ever listened to (because I have heard that he's kind of a shitty bigoted person and I'm not necessarily interested in giving him more views), so I couldn't tell you if he does this on all his songs/albums because I simply do not know. but in the verses to Sweating Bullets, he sounds like a clown who chain-smokes. his spoken voice sounds as if he's attempting to pitch it lower, but the closest he can get is "angry chihuahua." he sounds like a fuckin villain from a young children's cartoon, or an especially grumpy Muppet. I have to believe that this must have been one of the most iconic voices of its time, and I CANNOT FATHOM how anyone took him seriously with it. he honestly sounds like someone who's trying to PARODY the classic metal growl.
so all of that is hilarious on its own, and certainly funny enough for me to see why the Grumps have gone back to riff on it so many times. but babes... just wait till you see the music video. I will not give away anything about it; I just want you to experience it with the music as the artist intended. enjoy:
so that's why I find this one of the funniest songs of all time. being completely honest, I DO like it conceptually, and I really vibe with it. don't we all sometimes feel like we're trapped inside our own heads with an awful version of ourself who does nothing but shout mean things at us and tell us about all the terrible things that we can't stop from happening? part of the reason I included it on my mental health playlist is that I have myself been Dave Mustaine in the CGI asylum, feeling mocked and abused by my own internal processes and like my own thoughts are my enemy. I never heard this song as a teenager going through my first major depressive cycle and repeated struggles with c-PTSD, but hearing it as an adult still helps to soothe that sad, angry, traumatized teenager within me.
and also, I included it on my mental health playlist because it never fucking fails to make me giggle when I hear the opening line. the horrible mental illness goblin in my brain speaks in the voice of Dave Mustaine Megadeth now, and that just makes it that much easier to disengage from, because why would I ever take it seriously lmfao