Dave Mustaine speaks of new guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari

In a recent interview on 94.9 and 104.5 The Pick radio station (Idaho Falls), Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine addressed new touring guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari (Wintersun, Smackbound) and his presence in the band. The guitarist is filling in for Kiko Loureiro, who recently announced that he would not take part in the next leg of Megadeth‘s tour for personal reasons, and stay with his family in Finland.

Mustaine spoke of the guitarist replacement:

We currently have a guitar player situation, where our current guitar player is a man named Teemu Mäntysaari and our regular guitar player was Kiko Loureiro, Kiko had some issues. He went home and Teemu came in, and people are losing their minds over how things are going right now ’cause we have a really good chemistry together.’

We’ve got a bunch of songs from our catalog that we’re playing, a bunch of new songs too. We’ve been able to add a bunch of songs to the set because Teemu was a metal fan. Kiko did not grow up baptized in metal… Like the show we did a couple of nights ago, we opened with ‘Hangar [18]‘ and then we followed it up with ‘Mechanix‘. We’ve never done that before, so it’s a pretty heavy beginning. And we’ve added a second track off of the new album with ‘Soldier On!‘, and we’re getting ready to add a third.

But the tour is going to be ending in a couple days, and the next thing, obviously, is preparing for next year. We have another really good run in the States.

Transcribed by Blabbermouth.net

You can check out the original interview below: