Metal, Hardcore, Indie, Rock
Megadeth guitarist Teemu Mäntysaari was asked in a recent interview with Fernanda Hein of Chile’s Sonar FM what he thought about phone-free performances, like the Swedish metallers Ghost, who used Yondr pouches to implement a no-phone policy during their previous tour, as per Blabbermouth.
I think that idea is really cool. I’ve been to a couple shows that had that, where you would take your phone and you would put it in a kind of a locked bag. And we actually did that as well when we did our album pre-listening session in Nashville, which was like a small kind of a private VIP party for a couple hundred people. So we did that there as well, because we didn’t wanna show those songs, of course, to everybody beforehand.
I think that’s a cool idea, during the live shows, and those couple of bigger shows that I’ve been to where that was done, I think people really get to concentrate on the music when it’s not through the phone screen, but it’s actually direct contact. And I think it’s nice for the audience as well. I mean, of course it’s a kind of trade-off — then people don’t get to share the videos and photos from the show. But if the band has their own, like, media crew there filming stuff and it’s still shared, then you still get the video clips and you still get the stuff in the social media. So I think that’s probably gonna get more common, and more people probably will start doing that once it gets easier to do. And I think it’s a great idea.
Teemu responded as follows when asked if Megadeth had considered capturing any of the live performances from the band’s current farewell tour for potential future release.
We are actually recording all the shows always. And usually it’s just the audio part. So our front-of-house engineer records everything always. And whenever we can, we also do video, and we’re looking into different possibilities of doing more shows with video as well. And, yeah, [we are] hoping, at some point, to have enough material to choose from to do some kind of a live release.
Upcoming shows:
After performing two phone-free gigs in Los Angeles in 2023 for the making of the “Rite Here Rite Now” concert film, Ghost made its entire 2025 and 2026 tours phone-free, with audiences keeping their phones at all times, locked in Yondr pouches. During the British heavy metal titans’ recently started “Run For Your Lives” world tour, Iron Maiden ordered fans to put their phones away. Similar strategies have been used by other performers, like Tool, who ask fans to put down their phones until the last song of their performance.
