In October 1994, MEGADETH and their label took a chance with a new venture. To celebrate the release of the YOUTHANASIA album, the pioneering band established Megadeth, Arizona. It was the first-ever band website on the Internet.

The website—as Billboard (October 31, 2024) noted in a story celebrating its anniversary—was “based on the location of the band’s new studio in Phoenix,” and “was the concept for the first-ever artist website. In addition to the chat room, called the Megadiner, the site featured an art and digital-postcard repository, Vic’s Cactus Hut and Souvenir Shop, a newspaper titled Horrorscopes and links to videos and online-radio tracks.”

“When the internet came into our lives, we really didn’t understand it, just like anyone else,” MEGADETH founder Dave Mustaine explains. “But we had the greatest opportunity because we were the ones chosen to be the guinea pig. When the people over at Capitol had shown us what this was, the basic layout and some of the artwork, the images were all cool. The woman that had done the images had done a bunch of great images and made it really look cool like the stickers that are on the back of campers and shit like that, so I thought it was really great and exciting. Again, no one really knew what it was, so once we clicked on the launch button and it started all whizzing and banging and all that kind of stuff, it was remarkable. There’s been no looking back since.” (See below for DAVE Q&A about Megadeth, Arizona).

Meanwhile, the multi-platinum-selling and GRAMMY® Award-winning rockers just wrapped their U.S. tour which followed successful runs in Latin America (Peru, Chile, Argentina, Brazil and México) and Europe (Sweden, Italy, France, Germany, and more) and garnered stellar reviews (see below). Next up, MEGADETH will head into the studio to record new music, and look for additional dates to be announced for 2025.