“502” by Megadeth

"502" is Dave Mustaine's song through and through, cut for So Far, So Good... So What!, Megadeth's third album, which Capitol released in January 1988. Mustaine wrote the music and the words on his own, sings lead, plays guitar and co-produced with Paul Lani, who engineered it too, and Michael Wagener mixed. David Ellefson is on bass, and the rest of the lineup is a snapshot of a band in flux: Jeff Young on guitar and Chuck Behler on drums, on the only Megadeth album either of them made before both were fired in early 1989, months after the album's world tour ended.

The record around it runs at breakneck tempos with the chops to match, with Mustaine's lyrics ranging from nuclear holocaust to freedom of speech, and it signalled that Megadeth were about to break out of the underground.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz.