Megadeth‘s Dave Mustaine doesn’t hold back when prompted to speak his mind. In a recent interview with Kerrang! Radio at this month’s Download festival in the U.K., the metal pioneer rebuked bands who depend on pre-recorded tracks to carry their live performances.

This has become largely acceptable in the digital era, but Mustaine still believes it’s “lazy.”He said the following about incorporating archival cuts in stage sets: “I’ve always done the background singing on the records until — maybe about 10 years ago, we started having another person come in and help supplement the vocals because it’s just not my bag to be singing stuff that I’m not gonna sing live. I sing when I sing live on the records as much as I can.”

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with using supplements for songs and other sounds and stuff like that if you can’t play ’em live,” he continued. “If you can play it live and you’re being fucking lazy and you’re seeing whatever just happened a couple of days ago with one of those big bands, and the singer… the tape started and the drummer wasn’t playing or something. You probably heard about that. I can’t remember who it was.”

Many believe this is a reference to Kiss drummer Eric Singer’s slip-up during the band’s concert in Belgium earlier this month, which led fans to speculate on KISS using pre-recorded tracks in their shows. Furthermore, there has been online chatter about frontman Paul Stanley singing to a backing tape as well due to his struggles with hitting high notes. Ever since Kiss’s “End of the Road” tour launched in late January 2019, they have been the subject of authenticity.

“We don’t have vocals that are canned,” Mustaine added. “Usually what we have is a MIDI click track that runs all of our lights and switches all of our solos and stuff.”

Photo credit: Mauricio Alvarado