Into The Lungs Of Hell : Revisiting Megadeth’s ‘So Far, So Good…So What!’

If it weren’t for an older brother who was getting into thrash and speed metal in the mid-80s I may not have donned the mullet and devil horns until much later in my life. As it turned out I was probably 13-years old and I was spending the week after the last day of 7th grade at my uncle’s place. My aunt and infant cousin headed to Florida while my uncle stayed home to work. What better way to ring in summer break than hanging out with my favorite uncle who had guitars, recording equipment, and an NES system.

Unbeknownst to me my parents weren’t too keen on me being there all day by myself while my uncle worked, so my older brother took a few days off work and came over as well. So after we’d watch a movie and my uncle would go to bed my brother and I would stay up till the wee hours of the morning playing NES games. We’d wake around noon, eat a bologna sandwich then go hit the mall which was only 10 minutes away. On one of our drives out my brother played me Metallica’s Master Of Puppets, and after hearing “Battery” my teen brain was rewired. What. Did. I. Just. Hear? This was all new territory. The closest I’d gotten to that kind of metal was maybe Yngwie Malmsteen’s Rising Force. Or possibly Manowar. Master Of Puppets was a whole other level. Dark, thoughtful lyrics, menacing riffage, and pedal to the metal drumming.

A seed was planted.

The week was spent jamming Master Of Puppets and Frehley’s Comet in my brother’s green boat of an Oldsmobile, playing Mario, Excitebike, and Castlevania. That Thursday my brother tells me he’s leaving a day early. His buddy got them tickets to see Megadeth at the Agora Ballroom in Chicago for that night. “Cool”, I said.

My brother also made me promise not to tell our uncle who he was going to go see. Even at 19 he didn’t want to disappoint our youth pastor uncle.

So from Metallica we moved onto Megadeth. Of course Peace Sells(But Who’s Buying?) was first on the list, then their debut Killing Is My Business(And Business Is Good).

Peace Sells is a masterpiece. There’s some malevolent vibe in that record that not even Metallica ever quite reached. You don’t get darker than “Good Mourning/Black Friday”. Metallica kept it grounded with songs about drug addiction, the horrors of war, and the occasional trip into Lovecraft territory. But the “screw you” vibe came through much louder with Megadeth. It was angry, but it was also laughing in the face of absolute destruction. Mustaine was chaos incarnate. Amazing where resentment, substance abuse, and abandonment issues will take you and your art.

So when So Far, So Good…So What! came out in January of 1988 I was there release day. I had my lunch money saved up so I could purchase the cassette, with tax, for $8.40. I speed unwrapped it in the car and put it in the cassette player of the family Honda Accord and listened intently on the way home.

As much as I loved Peace Sells, there’s something about So Far, that connected with me even more. Maybe because I was in on the ground floor, as opposed to hearing it a couple years after it came out. It felt like it was more “mine”, I guess. It’s weird, but that’s just how it felt to my 14-year old brain.

The songs were top tier speed metal. Guitarist Chris Poland and drummer Gar Samuelson from Peace Sells were replaced with guitarist Jeff Young and drummer Chuck Behler. The band was tight and the record overall had a brighter sound than their previous records. Album opener, the killer instrumental “Into The Lungs Of Hell” sounded like some dizzying war cry from beyond. Killer double guitar riffage and a really cool descending guitar line that sort of felt like Dorothy falling from the sky into Oz. “Set The World Afire” is classic Mustaine nihilism. Mustaine’s signature killer rhythm guitar playing comes in full swing before the band explodes(no pun intended) into a metal symphony. The band locks in.

A couple of highlights here are the band’s first quasi-ballad “In My Time Of Dying”, which is a tribute to the late, great Cliff Burton who Mustaine played with in Metallica. It’s not a radio ballad or anything like that, but a dark, heartfelt metal song that keeps the candles lit throughout.

Like their two previous albums, Megadeth did a cover. Adding to previous covers “These Boots Were Made For Walkin'” and “I Ain’t Superstitious”, Megadeth cover The Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy In The UK”, which was one of the singles. MTV played the video quite a bit on Headbanger’s Ball.

The album never relents from start to finish. “Mary Jane” is eerie and reminiscent of Alice Cooper in a way(Megadeth covered Cooper’s “No More Mr. Nice Guy” for the Shocker S/T.) “502” is 90-mile an hour music, pure guitar riff heaven and some classic Mustaine “f**K you” lyrics(spoiler: he likes fast cars.) “Liar” is some seriously nasty business, sounding like Mustaine’s writing from Metallica’s Kill Em All and the whole thing has a NWOBHM vibe. Think late 70s Priest and Scorpions. And Mustaine gives Michael Stipe a run for his money in the speed singing with a section reminiscent of “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It(and I Feel Fine)” The album closes on “Hook In Mouth”, which is just a relentless speed metal assault on the frontal lobe.

I recently pulled my very beat up but still playable vinyl copy of So Far, So Good…So What! out of the library and man does it still jam. I still absolutely love this record from start to finish. Hearing it takes me back to the winter of 1988; putting it in my player in the basement and trying to learn “In My Darkest Hour” with the tabs lying open in front of me. I can remember road trips with my older brother listening to it, even heading to the very mall he bought Master Of Puppets so I could buy Anthrax State Of Euphoria. We listened to Megadeth on our way, and Anthrax on the way back.

Mostly though, I remember how that album made me feel. “Into The Lungs of Hell”, “Mary Jane”, “In My Darkest Hour”, “Anarchy In The UK”, and “Liar” just absolutely ripping my face off time and time again while I hung out in my bedroom on the weekend. It was a very accessible record; dark, relentless, and still with a healthy dose of unpredictable spirit, but it was the next step for Megadeth before they’d dominate the metal world with Rust In Peace.

For my money, this is their best album. Peace Sells(But Who’s Buying?) a very close second.