Megadeth have been associated with Arizona so much that when their website around Youthanasia launched in 1994 (one of the first bands to ever have a website), it was called Megadeth, Arizona. Yet frontman Dave Mustaine recently relocated to Franklin, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville that’s certainly not a hotbed of metal. However, Mustaine isn’t doing it for himself – he’s doing it for his daughter Electra. In an interview with Rolling Stone India, he says that her career as an aspiring country singer was the impetus:

The reason we moved out here was because I’ve made four records out here and all those times I was record­ing, I did live here. It really was comfort­able to be here. The last time we were here, Electra was only two years old. We didn’t know that she had the gift and once she started singing — I heard her sing one time and I was really convinced. I don’t profess to be a singer first and foremost — I’m a guitar player that sings more than a sing­er who plays guitar. But with her, she real­ly is. That’s her strong point. For her, this is music city. It’s all about country. It’s where she’s flourishing.

I could do my job from anywhere — Megadeth is that successful. I can do stuff on the net from a desert island if I wanted to. But I think for her, to be here right now and work with other songwrit­ers builds her name. She just goes in and meets people and doesn’t tell them who her dad is [laughs].

Elsewhere in the interview, Mustaine talks about the band’s forthcoming album, comparing it to Peace Sells:

It’s definitely a lot more old-school. You know, when you come from a metal back­ground and you’re playing really aggres­sive stuff, you learn about how to write stuff that’s melodic. That’s something to be looked at as an accomplishment, not some­thing to be ashamed of… I think that back in the Nineties when Def Leppard and Nir­vana became super successful, Megadeth and pretty much every other band was told ‘You need to change or you’re done’. Look at the radio in the States — there’s hard­ly any rock radio left and not even any playing metal.

The album will be released early next year, and if you listen to Chris Adler, a tour with Lamb of God might be in the works.

[via]