With their debut “Killing Is My Business… And Business Is Good!” (1985), Megadeth conquered a leading spot in the hall of fame of metal masters. Since then they’ve put on speed launching an album after the other, straight to the platinum range, and keeping that up until the late 90’s. Throughout all those years their music slightly varied from speed/thrash to some power and heavy metal, but thrash was the genre that was always in Dave Mustaine’s heart. In “United Abominations” Mustaine has “slackened” a bit again, leaning slightly towards heavy metal in some of the tunes. Nevertheless, beautiful solos and thrash riffs from the old days flow mighty underneath Glen Drover’s fingers, and the music is masterly composed and played. The biggest weakness of the album seems to be the lyrical content. Dave Mustaine has always had an opinion on politics and a strong anti-government position, revealed in the lyrics in “Youthanasia” (1994), “The System Has Failed” (2004)... However, in the quartet's latest album the words seem to have lost the weight. The words of “Gears of War” and “United Abominations” sound too patched-up and hollow, not to mention that the recitative trick used in the title track and “Amerikhastan” has lost the power of persuasion long ago... The opening “Sleepwalker”, on the other hand, has the strong whiff of Sonata Arctica’s werewolf stories, for example, which is far from praiseworthy for Megadeth. The overall impression from the album is... contradictory. The music is, as always, up to highest standards, but when the lyrics are that important they kind of tip the balance in the opposite direction. Anyway, Megadeth have always given us high class metal, so we couldn’t and shouldn’t deny them at the first sign of weakness. After all, it’s easier to get used to words when they’re backed by good music.